uHr
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OF WILLIAM JOHN BUTLER
 
 1888.
 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 OF 
 
 WILLIAM JOHN BUTLER 
 
 LATE DEAN OF LINCOLN 
 AND SOMETIME VICAR OF WANTAGE 
 
 WJTH PORTRAITS 
 
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 Ty tpyif) TOV Kvpiov ir&vTore, 
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 MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED 
 
 NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1897 
 
 All rightt reserved
 
 OLASUOW : PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY TRESS 
 BT ROBERT MACLEHOSR AND CO.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE late Dean of Lincoln was one of those whose 
 lives seem especially to call for some record. That 
 few men, certainly few men as uncompromising, 
 have ever won more affection from their fellows, 
 will be acknowledged by all who were present when 
 he was laid to rest under the shadow of Lincoln 
 Minster, and saw that vast building filled from end 
 to end with mourners and sympathizers, the greater 
 part of them being citizens of a city to which, less 
 than nine years before, he had come as a total 
 stranger. At the same time, few men who have 
 done so much work in their lives have been less 
 known by name to what is called " the general 
 public." On both accounts therefore, that those 
 who knew and loved him might have some per- 
 manent memorial of him, and that the record of a 
 strenuous life in which Englishmen even of widely 
 different schools of thought cannot fail to find a 
 stimulus, might be made known to many who never 
 felt its direct influence, it was thought that a 
 memoir of him might without presumption take
 
 VI 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 its place beside those of other men who did good 
 service in the generation that, is now passing away. 
 
 A few words seem to be called for in explanation 
 of the absence of any author's name from the title- 
 page of this book. When it became apparent that 
 abundant materials for it were forthcoming, several 
 persons, among them some of our approved writers 
 of clerical biography, were approached, in the hope 
 of securing adequate literary treatment for a narra- 
 tive which was felt to be not unworthy of a capable 
 hand. For one reason however or another none of 
 those before whom the proposal was laid found 
 himself at liberty to undertake the task ; and it 
 was resolved to try what could be done by the 
 method of pretty wide co-operation. Various friends 
 with whom in his life of many activities he had 
 come in contact, responded most kindly to the 
 suggestion that they should write down such re- 
 collections of him as were most vivid in their 
 minds ; and these, together with selections from 
 his correspondence, were arranged, with just so 
 much of connecting matter as was needed to give 
 unity to the book, by a member of his family, 
 aided by one of the Cathedral staff with whom he 
 had been in constant intercourse. To the friends 
 in question are due the warmest thanks of those 
 by whom the memory of William Butler is most 
 cherished. The greater part of them will be found 
 named in connexion with their contributions ; but 
 besides these the names of Rev. H. H. Woodward, 
 O. H. Drew, Esq., Miss Alice Ottley, Mrs. Arthur
 
 PREFACE vii 
 
 Baker, and E. M. Hutton Riddell, Esq., may be 
 mentioned. Thanks are also due to the representa- 
 tives of Mr. Keble, Canon Liddon, Cardinal Manning, 
 Bishop Wilberforce, and others, for permission to 
 publish letters written by them. 
 
 We are constantly being reminded in the inter- 
 course of society that "the world is very round"; 
 and the same holds true in a measure of the world 
 of books. For illustration of the biography of a 
 hard-working clergyman one would hardly look to 
 a school of fiction based upon the negation of all 
 which the clergyman morally and socially represents. 
 Yet those who realize that Wantage is the 'Alfred- 
 ston' of one of the most powerful, and repulsive, 
 novels which the English branch of that school 
 has produced, will find it interesting and instructive 
 to contrast the novelist's more or less conjectural 
 criticism of life in and about our smaller country- 
 towns with the results actually produced on that 
 life by constructive energy, informed and directed 
 by faith, hope, and love. 
 
 A. J. B.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 EAELY YEARS. 
 
 Birth and Parentage School Days Trinity College, Cambridge 
 Letters to his Mother Failure of Johnston & Co. Preparation 
 for Holy Orders - 1-20 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE BEGINNING OF WORK. 
 
 Influence of Rev. Charles Dyson Ordained Deacon and Priest- 
 Incumbent of Wareside Correspondence with Rev. J. Keble 
 Acceptance of Wantage - 21-45 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 TROUBLED TIMES. 
 
 Setting to Work Letters Archdeacon Pott's Recollections 'Black 
 Wantage ' Correspondence Work at Wantage Anxiety The 
 
 Gorham Judgment Correspondence with Keble and - 
 
 Extract from the "Parish Journal" Restoration of the Parish 
 Church opposed - - 46-86 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE PARISH. 
 
 The Parish Rural Dean Restoration of the Parish Church Rev. 
 W. G. Sawyer's Recollections Canon Carter's Recollections 
 Correspondence With Dr. Liddon Parish Records and Work 
 Foreign Missions Preaching Parochial Visiting Extracts 
 from the " Parish Journal " 87-126
 
 4VcMM.i. 
 
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 CHAPTER I. 
 
 EARLY YEARS. 
 
 WILLIAM JOHN BUTLER was born 10th February, 
 1818, in Bryanston Street, Marylebone. the eldest 
 child of John Laforey Butler and Henrietta his wife, 
 daughter of Capt. Robert Patrick. His father was 
 a partner in the mercantile house of Johnston & Co. 
 in Bush Lane. His family originally came from 
 Pembrokeshire. Mrs. Butler was of Irish descent, 
 the Patricks having settled in the seventeenth 
 century in the north of Ireland, in company with 
 many other Scottish families, at the " Plantation of 
 Ulster." Something must be said of the characters 
 of Mr. and Mrs. Butler, to form some conception 
 of the influences which surrounded William Butler's 
 childhood. The father was a thoroughly upright, 
 conscientious man, sensitive in disposition, extremely 
 accurate and fastidious in language ; traits which 
 were certainly inherited by the son. The mother's 
 Irish blood brought with it the national character- 
 istics of gaiety and open-heartedness, and a keen 
 sense of humour. William Butler was baptized at 
 
 t.
 
 2 EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 Marylebone Church by the Rev. Basil Woodd, who 
 presented him with Burkitt on the Neiv Testa- 
 ment, in unconscious anticipation of his future 
 clerical career. After him were born two sons 
 Charles and Paul, twins ; and two daughters- 
 Frances, who married Kirkman Daniel Hodgson, 
 Esq., M.P., and Anna. 
 
 There is little to tell about his childhood. It was 
 passed at Southgate, in the parish of Edmonton, 
 Middlesex, whither his parents moved from London. 
 He is reported to have been " a fine child, and 
 forward for his age," which is evident from his 
 having read Beckmann's Inventions and Bingley's 
 Animal Biography when only five or six years 
 old ; "a thoroughly manly boy, and very tender- 
 hearted," " never frivolous or indolent, always fond 
 of study and literature ; quite without malice or 
 unkind feelings towards anyone"; such is the testi- 
 mony of his surviving brother and sister. 
 
 He was brought up religiously in the school 
 of old-fashioned, orthodox churchmanship, and one 
 little incident of his childhood bears witness to it. 
 During a thunderstorm, when he was between three 
 and four years of age, he was heard to repeat the 
 Collect, " Lighten our darkness." No one w r ho knew 
 his fidelity through life to the Prayer Book will 
 fail to appreciate this early manifestation of it. 
 
 The village schoolmaster taught him till he was 
 eight or nine ; he then went to a school kept by 
 the Rev. Stephen Freeman at Forty Hill, in Enfield, 
 a few miles from his home. No trace remains of
 
 1841 AT WESTMINSTER 3 
 
 his schooldays there except a letter to his grand- 
 mother Mrs. Patrick, the joint composition of 
 himself and his brothers, who were at school with 
 him. From Enfield he went in 1830 to West- 
 minster, where he was elected a Queen's Scholar. 
 
 One of his few surviving schoolfellows has fur- 
 nished some recollections of these early days. He 
 writes as follows : 
 
 We were together at Westminster for five years as Queen's 
 Scholars, but until the fifth year we were not in the same 
 Election. College consisted of four Elections, and the boys of 
 the same Elections were associated as friends. If I had, in 
 the usual course, left Westminster at the end of my fourth 
 year of College, I should never have known Butler. For special 
 reasons I was allowed to stay there a fifth year, and so be- 
 came one of the same Election, and I then began to associate 
 with him; but I had already a special friend in the same 
 Election, and I did not seek to make a friend of Butler. 
 My impression of him at that time was of a boy of more 
 than average ability and acquired knowledge, but too evidently 
 conscious of his acquirements, and disposed to boast of them, 
 and very confident in his own opinion. Such a character and 
 the fact of his having very short sight invited much mockery 
 and teasing by his companions, so that my recollections of 
 him at that time consist principally of absurd situations in 
 which he placed himself through attempting things in which 
 he failed, partly through defective sight, partly through natural 
 awkwardness. 
 
 Defective sight made him fail at cricket, football, and hockey ; 
 but he learned to row, and when in 1836 a Westminster eight 
 rowed against an Eton eight at Staines, he rowed No. 4, I 
 rowing No. 8. Westminster was then a rough school, and I 
 recollect some special examples among boys of the Elections 
 above Butler's of low moral tone, but I have no recollection 
 of his ever following bad example, or that he ever was other- 
 wise than well conducted both in and out of school hours. 
 
 In May 1836 he and I were elected scholars of Trinity
 
 4 EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 College, Cambridge, and we did not meet from that month 
 till the following October, when we began to keep terms at 
 Trinity. The rough discipline he underwent at Westminster 
 was perhaps wholesome for him. At Cambridge his opinion 
 of his own acquirements and ability were seldom manifest. 
 His friends were of the best of the Trinity undergraduates, 
 e.g. Vaughan, now Dean of LlandafF, Hodson, now Vicar of 
 Enfield, Mathison, Lawrence, Webb, Philip Freeman, Farrer, 
 and, in his last year, George Kennedy of St. John's. At that 
 time no one was allowed to try for classical honours who had 
 not taken mathematical. Butler had no taste for mathematics, 
 and wisely, I think, decided not to waste time in learning 
 what he disliked, but to prepare for the ordinary B.A. degree. 
 He read steadily the subjects necessary for that degree ; he 
 also read higher Classics with Vaughan as a private tutor, 
 and if he could have tried for Honours in Classics I believe 
 he would have taken a high place. He also read Italian, 
 French, and I think German, and History. He was a member 
 of the Cambridge Camden Society, which implied some know- 
 ledge of architecture; he attended Professor Smythe's lectures 
 on the French Revolution, and Professor Sedgwick's lectures 
 on Geology. He was a member of the Union and occasionally 
 took part in the debates. 
 
 Butler was in lodgings during his first year; then, until he 
 left Cambridge, he had the rooms in the upper story of the 
 gateway tower leading from the great Court into Trinity Lane, 
 known as the Queen's Gate. M. T. Fairer, also a Westminster 
 scholar, had the lower story. 
 
 When we went to Trinity in October, 1836, the Third 
 Trinity (Eton and Westminster) Boat Club, which had once 
 been head of the river, was very low, I think tenth, and we 
 were persuaded to join in recovering its place. When we left 
 it was second, and for some time Butler regularly took part 
 in the practice and races ; but after the first year he found 
 it interfered with reading, and he ceased to row with the first 
 crew. He was never a first-rate oar, but could always be 
 depended on to do his best. 
 
 In January 1840 we took our B.A. degree ; I then left 
 Cambridge, and I believe that I did not see Butler again until 
 1844, when we were there to take our M.A. degree. In that
 
 1841 DEAN VAUGHAN'S RECOLLECTIONS 5 
 
 interval each had married, and each had nearly lost his wife 
 in her first confinement, and for that reason we were more 
 drawn together than ever before. At his invitation I went with 
 my wife to stay a Sunday with him at a place near Amwell 
 in Herts, where he had a Cure. We went to Amwell on the 
 Saturday, and I remember being taken by him in the evening 
 to help in the teaching of a men's night school, and I began 
 to understand and appreciate his real character and the energy 
 of his work. I did not visit him again until he was at 
 Wantage. Of his work there and since he left Wantage there 
 are many who can tell far better than I can, and I do not 
 attempt to say anything of it. 
 
 I feel that what I have written will help you little, if at 
 all, to give any idea of Butler's life at Westminster and 
 Cambridge ; I wish it were otherwise. Since I knew what 
 he really was I have always regretted that I did not take 
 more pains to know him when I had the opportunity at 
 Cambridge. 
 
 The Very Eeverend C. J. Vaughan, D.D., who 
 was his most intimate friend during a good part 
 of his Cambridge career, writes : 
 
 It must ever be a pleasure to me to think of your father, 
 so dear and kind a friend in the young life of Cambridge 
 and Trinity days, and even in the later years of silence and 
 separation not forgotten. 
 
 I can still see him as he was in the long vacation of 1837, 
 the time of our closest intimacy, full of health and spirits, 
 always brave and true, not yet developed into the devotion 
 of his maturer life, but already loved by good men like our 
 dear common friend G-. E. L. Cotton, and already with many 
 " shadows cast before " of what he was to be in due time. 
 
 I have little to say that is worth saying. But this is 
 because our life together was uneventful and our friendship 
 without breach or jar. 
 
 When we met forty or fifty years afterwards in Convocation, 
 generally voting on opposite sides, the old alliance was still 
 recognized both in speech and feeling on both sides. And
 
 6 EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 when I last saw him (in the Charing Cross Hospital) he was 
 the same cheery and joyful companion that I knew him of 
 old, only ripened into the man of experience, the man of 
 many toils and high attainments in the service of God and 
 man. 
 
 His friendship for the writer of these lines led 
 on one occasion to an affair which seems to have 
 made some stir in the University, and might, but 
 for the intervention of some sensible advisers, have 
 brought him into serious trouble. In the early part 
 of 1839, Mr. Vaughan was standing for the office 
 of President of the Union Society, and Butler 
 naturally canvassed with energy for his friend. 
 There was, however, a set, headed by some young 
 men of good family belonging to St. John's, with 
 whom Mr. Vaughan was personally unpopular. These 
 put up an opposition candidate, and party feeling 
 ran somewhat high. Butler, in common with a 
 large number of members, had signed a requisition 
 to the existing president, agreeably to the rules of 
 the society, calling upon him to reconsider some 
 decision, and this was lying in the reading-room for 
 signature. S , one of the Johnians in question, 
 and some of his set, chancing to see this, added to the 
 list of names in a not uncommon vein of under- 
 graduate wit those of certain race-horses. The 
 matter attracted some notice. At a meeting on 
 March 21st, Butler moved a resolution expressing the 
 society's disapprobation of this conduct. A stormy 
 debate resulted, in the course of which S - used 
 some epithets that were thought to involve an
 
 1841 AN ALTERCATION AT THE UNION 7 
 
 allusion to private and personal matters. Failing 
 to obtain from the president the protection which 
 he thought due to him, Butler then moved that 
 the house should form itself into a committee. 
 This was carried, and the chair was taken by a 
 fellow of Trinity, no less a person than the well- 
 known scholar J. W. Donaldson. S - then observed 
 that " seeing the name of the honourable mover 
 among the signers of the requisition he had written 
 down the names of the five other brutes." Cam- 
 bridge men of a later generation will recognize the 
 Unionic invective, as still employed occasionally by 
 heated orators. However, this was a little too much, 
 
 and S narrowly escaped expulsion on the spot, 
 
 the feeling, it would appear, being almost unanimous 
 against him. A demand for an apology only elicited, 
 as it would seem, an insolent reply, and threats 
 of personal violence were uttered by the aggrieved 
 party. It was, however, represented by cooler- 
 headed friends that the result of this might be 
 serious for both sides. At that time duelling was 
 not yet a tradition of the remote past, and the 
 penalty for taking part in a duel, even if no worse 
 consequences ensued, would inevitably be expulsion 
 from the University. 
 
 Ultimately the matter was put into the hands 
 of three friends, Trinity men of good standing, two 
 undergraduates and one B.A., the latter being the 
 senior classic of the previous year, W. G. Humphry, 
 in after years Vicar of St. Martin's in the Fields. 
 These prudent counsellors, to whose judgement
 
 8 EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 Butler absolutely submitted himself, decided, as 
 indeed they could hardly have failed to do, " that 
 it was only to the expression of public feeling that 
 he could look for redress," and " that on the manner 
 in which that feeling had been expressed by the 
 Union Society and generally in the University, he 
 had every reason to congratulate himself." 
 
 About a week later, S , who had also in 
 
 the meantime taken counsel with a friend, wrote 
 acknowledging that the expressions used by him 
 " were unbecoming and unjustifiable," and the matter 
 seems to have blown over, though from a letter 
 written to Butler by his mother nearly a month 
 afterwards, it would seem that discords still sim- 
 mered. Among other things she writes : 
 
 I myself wish you had amongst you all, one clear-sighted 
 old Nestor who might, from his own wisdom, put down the 
 whole quarrel, which in a few years will be seen by the present 
 young actors as quite a ridiculous business ; a Professor of 
 Patience and Harmony being much needed there, I suspect. 
 
 The old story, si jeunesse savait. 
 
 Another letter written by Mrs. Butler to her son 
 about this time contains some sound advice on the 
 subject of bills. 
 
 Your expenses are now becoming understood by yourself, 
 and by a judicious arrangement you can get them into a nut- 
 shell. Pray have as FEW bills as possible. Tradespeople are 
 not always friendly to this, as amongst many a profit is obtained 
 by the contrary practice. But it is so injurious to the honest 
 feelings of a young person to be spending he knows not what 
 of his income, and then temptations abound till the best 
 principles are led to yield. Also the doctoring of bills, by which
 
 1841 PASSING THE LITTLE-GO 9 
 
 I mean, the making an account out; but from an idea that 
 another can be subtracted from it, the endeavour to make 
 all appear SMOOTH becomes a perpetual source of artifice and 
 plotting which weighs down a mind, otherwise ingenuous, till 
 it becomes callous, reckless, and hardened, and is at last com- 
 pletely out of that strong firm path of integrity for which no 
 human pleasure can compensate. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS MOTHER. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, March 30, 1838. 
 
 I have just passed that dreadful and difficult ordeal yclept 
 by the Dons " the previous examination," and by the Under- 
 graduates "Little-go." I went in on Tuesday, the second day 
 of examination, in a most wholesome state of alarm, for it is 
 a peculiarity attached to this examination that every one, 
 from the best even unto the worst men in the year, are 
 frightened by the prospect of this. Paley's Evidences is the 
 great bugbear to most, but some unfortunate mathematical 
 men, who have never been at public schools, get plucked in 
 the Classics. However, my horror was greatly abated in the 
 course of an hour, and on finding I could floor eight out of 
 nine questions in Paley, it was changed to mirth. Well, in 
 the evening at nine o'clock my fate was decided, and I was 
 written down as " examined and approved," with sundry others ; 
 forty went in on my day, and of these fourteen were plucked. 
 . . . A friend of mine goes in to-morrow; I have been 
 coaching him, as the technical expression is, for the last fort- 
 night. . . . To-morrow, Sedgwick, the geological professor, 
 gives a field-lecture, i.e. a cross-country expedition on horse- 
 back, stopping at the various places worthy of his attention. 
 These he previously specifies, and I am going to walk with a 
 friend of mine and cut off corners, etc., and get to the different 
 points where he lectures, and so get what good we can. He 
 winds up at Ely. . . . Vaughan has just been bracketed 
 equal with Lord Lyttelton for the Chancellor's Medals, a prize 
 given to Classics. He was also put equal with him in the 
 Classical Tripos Examination, so that the two are as equal as 
 possible. Vaughan beat him two years ago for the University 
 Scholarship, and last year when Vaughan was hors de combat
 
 io EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 Lyttelton got the Scholarship. This year Freeman of Trinity 
 and Williams of King's got the two Scholarships. . . . Have 
 any of you read Carlyle's History of the French Revolution 1 It 
 is written in quite a new style, and, as far as I can judge, an 
 exceedingly powerful one. I long to be able to read it satis- 
 factorily through when I get home, for I have no time here. 
 
 In the summer he was at the Lakes with a reading 
 party during the Long Vacation. Some brief extracts 
 from his journal contain his impressions of some 
 Oxford contemporaries. 
 
 Ambleside, July 11. Wednesday and rainy. Faber an 
 Oxford Catholic and friend of Freeman came with two pupils. 
 He teaed with us. Sufficiently conceited and donnish. 
 
 Friday. Faber & Co. dined with us including Whytehead. 
 The mannerism of these people is intolerable. 
 
 Saturday. To my great joy the Balstons came, as it will 
 perhaps relieve us from that eternal Faber & Co. 
 
 Balstons, Champernowne, Froude, Freeman, and I set forth 
 to climb Fairfield. 
 
 Sunday, August 5. We Avalked to Troutbeck, a little village 
 four miles off, to hear Arnold preach. He preached very well 
 indeed. The church was most primitive, only one pew, and 
 most extraordinary altar decorations. The real clergyman, 
 Arnold told us, spoke in the regular Westmoreland dialect. 
 The walk was most beautiful, and showed the mountains to 
 perfection, Sea wf ell, Langdale Pikes, and the arch [?] of 
 Mickledoor, to which Arnold compared the Greek /^eyaA?? dvpa, 
 as being exactly the same in sound. 
 
 On this tour he is said to have taken a black-letter 
 Chaucer for his private reading. Mr. Freeman took 
 the Christian Year. Before long they exchanged 
 books, and he expresses his admiration for the 
 Christian Year in verses, which are given more to 
 show his appreciation of its character than for any
 
 1841 VERSES WRITTEN AT CAMBRIDGE ir 
 
 peculiar excellence of their own. He had indeed 
 what Wordsworth calls the " Faculty of verse," and 
 wrote it till the last year of his life, but he never 
 considered himself in any sense of the term a poet. 
 
 CHRISTIAN YEAR. 
 
 Here are no strains of maniac devotee 
 
 Blighting soft mercy with their uncouth lay, 
 
 Nor here the songs of Pagan revelry 
 
 Unhallowed, darkening the pure Gospel day ; 
 
 But here the gentle streams of Heaven glide 
 
 Rippling through caves of crystal, where the air 
 
 Is soft and pleasant, and the woodland's pride 
 Of song is echoed from each distant lair. 
 
 Roses not thorns surround their path of love 
 
 While through their variegated banks they rove, 
 Slaking the thirst of all who hither haste 
 With ardent souls, the glittering springs to taste, 
 
 And ebbing now, now flowing, glancing bright 
 
 Where all before appeared but gloomy night. 
 
 Although a smoker in his College days, he entirely 
 gave up the use of tobacco after he was ordained. 
 The following verses amusingly recall his old attach- 
 
 ^7 / 
 
 ment to the habit for which in later days he 
 expressed antipathy. 
 
 A TRINITY CLOISTER INCIDENT. 
 
 Gently was the night breeze blowing, 
 
 Tranquil light the fair moon gave, 
 Sleep o'er mortals' breasts was flowing, 
 
 All was silent as the grave, 
 Save my footsteps' echoed traces, 
 
 As through cloistered shades I walked, 
 Thinking now of lovely faces, 
 
 Pleasures past, or pleasures baulked.
 
 12 EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 Sweet, though tinged with sacred sorrow, 
 
 All my recollections were, 
 And I hoped the coming morrow, 
 
 Like the past, would be as fair. 
 Puffing at my mild Havannah, 
 
 Slow and grave I Avandered on, 
 As on bank of Guadiana 
 
 Stalks the solemn Spanish Don. 
 But a Cambridge Don drew nigher 
 
 Filled with Euclid, filled with spleen, 
 When he saw the gleaming fire 
 
 Anger turned his visage green. 
 " Sir," he cried, " what means this horrid 
 
 Stench, what means this loose array, 
 Men come here to store their forehead, 
 
 Not to blow their wits away." 
 
 A tragic event which occurred while William 
 Butler was at Trinity is thus described by him in 
 a letter to his mother. 
 
 I must now tell you the most distressing thing I ever heard. 
 
 Poor F was drowned on Sunday morning at half-past 
 
 one o'clock, under the most fearful circumstances. I knew 
 him very well, and was to have breakfasted with him that 
 very morning. I am so much shocked that it will be quite 
 a relief to tell you the whole case. I had sculled to and from 
 Ely with Arthur Shadwell and a Trinity man named Welby. 
 On our return we went to Welby's rooms for some food, and 
 
 while we were there in came F . He sat down and joined 
 
 us, and stayed there till near one o'clock, talking and laughing. 
 We were, as usual, quizzing him, etc. Another man named 
 
 B came in and said he was hungry. F , the most 
 
 good-natured fellow alive, said that he had provided food for 
 
 his breakfast party next day, and B might have some 
 
 then if he liked. But B [said] this would not be fair and 
 
 asked him to get some audit ale he (F ) had. F went 
 
 for the ale, the party broke up, and B thought no more 
 
 of it, but went to bed. In a short time F came to his
 
 1841 A CAMBRIDGE TRAGEDY 13 
 
 rooms with the ale, but finding him in bed wished him good- 
 night, and returned for his own rooms, which are in the 
 Great Court, on the Chapel side. But going through the 
 
 screens, he met a tipsy man named H standing there with 
 
 some others. F said, We ought to go out of College to- 
 night; H- agreed, hardly knowing what he said, and F 
 
 being the most experienced, offered to show them the way. 
 Now the way out of College is round the extremity of a wall 
 which abuts on the river, at the back of the library. This 
 wall it was necessary to stride round from one parapet to the 
 
 other. F got round safely enough, but H , being very 
 
 tipsy, missing his footing tumbled in. The water was up to 
 
 his waist, but he was very much frightened. F , who was 
 
 a capital swimmer, called out, Can you swim ? No, said H . 
 
 So F took off his coat and hat, and walked down the steps 
 
 into the water to help him out. He got hold of him, and went 
 back with him towards the steps, but, owing to the darkness 
 probably, could not find them. He was heard to say, "Never 
 mind, I will take you across." He was seen to go across with 
 
 H for a little way, and suddenly both disappeared. There 
 
 was another man there named H 1, who had merely joined 
 
 them to see the climb round the wall. He rushed away for 
 
 help, and on returning they found H clinging to the ivy 
 
 on the wall, and saw nothing of F . Knowing that he 
 
 was a good swimmer, they supposed he had swam across and 
 gone away for fear of being caught, and gave themselves little 
 
 trouble about him. H was far too flurried with wine 
 
 and horror to know anything about him, nor even how he 
 himself got to the wall. They let down a drag to him, and 
 pulled him [up] when he had been about twenty minutes in 
 the water. Ferguson met them in the cloisters as they were 
 carrying him up, and one of them said that they were not 
 
 quite sure about F , but hardly supposing that anything 
 
 could have happened. Ferguson said that there should be 
 no doubt on such a question, and immediately climbed over 
 
 the walls to the Johnian Bridge to see for tidings of F . 
 
 In the meantime others came ; they got a boat and a drag, 
 yet hardly believing any mischief, and after dragging for nearly 
 three hours, struck on his body. It was carried into College 
 at five o'clock yesterday morning. Of course he was quite
 
 14 EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 dead. You may imagine the sensation which so appalling an 
 event would cause. An inquest sat yesterday, and brought 
 in a verdict of "drowned while endeavouring to rescue Mr. 
 
 H ." There can be no doubt that going in as he did, flushed 
 
 and heated, after eating and drinking heartily, and feet fore- 
 most, brought on a sudden fit of apoplexy. The affair is 
 rendered more distressing by the fact that his brother was 
 burnt to death at school about a year and a half ago. 
 
 Mrs. Butler was a thoroughly religious-minded 
 woman, and her letters show it. In one she speaks 
 in terms of high approval of Newman's sermons ; 
 but in another, dated 30th November, 1838, she 
 gently reproves her son for neglecting to attend 
 the funeral of the veteran leader of the Evangelical 
 party at Cambridge. 
 
 I received your letter, and had great pleasure in so doing, 
 perceiving the cheerful strain in which it was written; but 
 before I proceed to one topic, in which I know you will 
 sympathize with me, two or three remarks I Avill previously 
 make upon your's. I should have felt better pleased had 
 you on the day of Mr. Simeon's funeral made the attendance 
 upon it instead of your water excursion. 
 
 She then proceeds to give a graphic account of 
 a fire which had broken out in the house between 
 one and two in the morning. The whole family 
 had had a narrow escape of being burnt to death, 
 and probably would have been had not Mrs. Butler 
 been awakened by the smoke, and given the alarm. 
 Touches that now look quaint enough are the 
 allusions to the efficiency of the " New Police," 
 Sir Robert Peel's recent invention, and, a small 
 domestic tragedy, "the parrot burnt to a cinder."
 
 1841 LIFE AT CAMBRIDGE 15 
 
 She concludes, " All little matters now appear indeed 
 useless, after so great a crisis, to dwell upon. To 
 you I repeat, my dear boy, be steady, seek not 
 company for company's sake ; a character of another 
 kind I pray may be your's for the sake of many 
 whose happiness is bound up with your's. Economy 
 also, and not those vain amusements which end in 
 nothing." 
 
 In 1839 he won the Trinity College Essay Prize. 
 The subject was " The Colonial Policy of the 
 Ancients." A complimentary notice in a Cambridge 
 paper describes it as manifesting " ability, learning, 
 and research." His mother, writing from Southgate, 
 23rd March, says, " I am glad we are so soon to 
 enjoy a re-perusal of your essay, which for so deep 
 a production of Greek and Latin quotations is as 
 little dry as possible." 
 
 Some excellent advice as to the necessity of 
 keeping accounts follows, and one sentence recalls 
 a characteristic trait which distinguished him through 
 life : " You are not extravagant, quite, I should say, 
 the reverse, but from a born indolence averse to 
 the routine of Bookkeeping." 
 
 He took his B.A. degree in January 1840. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS MOTHER. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, February 12, 1840. 
 
 I got another present from Freeman. It was the large 
 edition of the Christian Year, handsomely bound in morocco. 
 I liked it particularly from him, because he first opened my 
 eyes to its surpassing beauties. I write this letter while waiting
 
 16 EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 for my lazy pupil, I wish I could say pupils. This is the 
 second lesson he has skipped, and I am sure I read more for 
 him than he does for himself. ... I just returned to 
 Cambridge in time to see Cotton, who departed for Rugby 
 the next day. I have agreed to pay him a visit at Easter. 
 ... I am attending Professor Scholefield's Lectures in 
 Thucydides, and preparing for these together with coaching 
 my pupil, and preparing for it, pretty nearly occupies all my 
 time. . . . The Classical examination is going on, and I 
 
 instruct D as much as I can, but I fear that he is not 
 
 likely to do very well. Alfred Shadwell has done better 
 than I expected. Kennedy is one of the examiners, and I 
 am to read the papers to him this evening, while he marks 
 the faults. 
 
 The last remark implies a curiously slack method, 
 as it would now appear, of performing an examiner's 
 duties. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS SISTER. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, February 24, 1840. 
 
 I have been assisting Kennedy to examine the papers of the 
 candidates for the Classical Honours. Drew, Shadwell, and 
 many of my friends are among them, and I feel sometimes sorely 
 tempted to cheat ! I have also been correcting the proof sheets 
 of my essay, which will be out in a very few days, as soon as I 
 can get hold of Kennedy to look over it, and correct any errors 
 which may have crept in by negligence of the author, for when 
 printed it is of course irrevocable. I am looking out for a pupil 
 to go abroad with this summer, for I think that that would be 
 an agreeable arrangement for every one, both at home and at 
 Cambridge. I should like some one to prepare for Cambridge. 
 Last week I dined out every day. Never were such doings 
 with Kennedy, Lawrence, White, and others, and in King's 
 Hall with the Fellows. ... I think that Mr. Quin is a 
 great humbug. I recommend you not to argue with him, but 
 ask him, if the Roman Church be in reality the same as the 
 Anglican, why he goes to a Dissenting Chapel instead of the 
 Parish Church. I have no patience with such sophistry.
 
 1841 A REVERSE OF FORTUNE 17 
 
 In July he started with a pupil for a continental 
 tour. They went from Southampton to Havre ; then 
 to Paris, where they stayed till the 17th, and then 
 visited Berne, Lausanne, and Geneva, passing on by 
 Turin and Genoa to Florence and Rome, and seeing 
 Ravenna on the way to Venice. He kept a journal 
 during the tour, which is a good sample of the 
 thoroughgoing industry he put into all his work. 
 Public buildings, churches, and pictures he never 
 allowed to escape his eye. At Lake Leman, after 
 saying that one end of the lake is rendered classical 
 by Chillon, St. Gingo, and Vevey, he adds in a note, 
 " I never met with this saint except here and in 
 the Vicar of Wakefield, ' by the living Jingo,' 
 which oath evil disposed people have tried to 
 explain away ! " 
 
 The journal ends abruptly at Venice, September 
 22nd. 
 
 The year 1840 was destined to end in gloom, 
 and a crisis took place which materially affected 
 his prospects. Hitherto he had known no pecuniary 
 cares. His father was a partner in a flourishing 
 mercantile house, and although he was precise and 
 careful in money arrangements with his sons, he does 
 not seem to have stinted them. Suddenly, without 
 any preliminary warning, it was discovered that a 
 very large sum of money had been misappropriated, 
 quite sufficient to put the credit of Johnston & Co. 
 in jeopardy, if not to ruin them. Mrs. Butler had 
 the unpleasant task of breaking this bad news to 
 her son in a letter dated 5th November, 1840. After
 
 i8 EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 a few lines on domestic matters she introduces the 
 painful subject as, "the trial which I am now 
 wishing to break to you, the all but total ruin of 
 Bush Lane." 
 
 Having now broken the ice, I will enter more into detail, 
 begging you, darling son, to remember that no fault or error 
 attaches to your beloved father, who bears his share of the 
 calamity with calm and manly fortitude, feeling and relying 
 upon the affection of his dearest Will, Paul, and Charles, all 
 now approaching the age when their influence over his mind 
 and prospects can be felt. 
 
 No time was lost by her son on the receipt of 
 this bad news, in devising means by which he 
 might maintain himself, and so relieve his parents 
 of any outlay on his behalf. Till the fortunes of 
 the family began to recover he supported himself 
 by taking pupils, and he prepared to take Holy 
 Orders as soon as possible. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS MOTHER. 
 
 [Undated.] 
 
 As this is the fourth letter I have been writing this morning, 
 you must not expect it to be very long. I was very much 
 obliged for your long letter, which gave me a very good idea of 
 the state of things, and which I have duly forwarded to Paul. 
 
 I think Mr. J 's a very timely offer. I had a most kind 
 
 letter from Mr. G , who says that he is proud to be 
 
 called the friend of such a man as my father. He also sent 
 me an enormous brace of birds, and I took the opportunity 
 to send these to Aunt with a letter, which brought me back 
 next day a most kind reply. I will enclose it for you, as I 
 think it may show you that her zeal has not, as you feared 
 it might, tired itself out. I have got two whole pupils for 
 the Christmas vacation, which puts 20 into my pocket. I
 
 1841 FACING THE FUTURE 19 
 
 am sadly afraid I shall not be able to visit you at all pleasantly 
 till after the 14th of next month, so that you must not expect 
 me on Christmas day, though if it seem at all feasible or 
 judicious, I certainly will be at Southgate. After that time 
 I shall be free from pupils for a week or so, and my mind 
 will be more unoccupied. At present I am as busy as a 
 bee. I had an offer of a perpetual curacy of .70 a year at 
 Halifax, but I think that this will not be worth my while, 
 without the certainty of two or three pupils at 200 a-piece, 
 and Halifax is so disagreeable a town, that I should not get 
 them. The only spoke in the wheel for a Chaplaincy l is 
 that to be eligible it is necessary to be in orders, so that I 
 am exerting all my powers to get a title in or near Cambridge, 
 or a Sunday duty within reach, and I have written to Mr. 
 Gwilt on the subject. Mr. Barnett's is a most delightful 
 letter. I have not had so much pleasure for a long time as 
 
 in reading it. ... I think that Mr. acts like a fool. 
 
 It is very easy for a man to be thought an oracle, when he 
 has plenty of money to enforce his opinions. I must now 
 return to Bullinger and Transubstantiation, and with love to 
 my dear father, Fanny, Anna, and Charley, I am, dearest 
 mamma, ever your affectionate son, 
 
 W. J. BUTLER. 
 
 His father wrote to him at the end of the year. 
 
 December 30, 1840. 
 
 MY DEAREST WILL, I have had so many events to meet 
 of late that I have had hardly courage to sit down and write 
 to you, nor can I do so now at length ; but I cannot help 
 now telling you how much I have felt the tender love and 
 affection which you have shown me under the circumstances 
 in which I have been placed, and what a blessing it has been 
 to us all to be allied to one who fills in so exemplary a 
 manner every duty of life. I leave to your dear mother 
 and sisters the detail of passing events. My chief object in 
 writing is to request you to address a letter to Messrs. H. 
 & I. Johnston & Co., authorising them to pay over to me 
 
 1 Of the College. (?)
 
 20 EARLY YEARS 1818- 
 
 the sum of 500 deposited in your name with the late firm 
 of Johnston, Butler, & Son, by Charles Shadwell ; the meaning 
 of this I will explain more fully hereafter. ... I am to 
 have a third instead of a half of the profits, which is as 
 much as I could reasonably expect considering the large sum 
 which I am unable to pay of my share of losses, and I can 
 only expect a very small income for some time to come ; 
 still it is better than being cast on the world to struggle for 
 a subsistence. My health has kept up better than I could 
 have expected. 
 
 The fortunes of the house of Johnston & Co. 
 revived under Mr. Butler's able management, and 
 with the assistance of friends, who had the fullest 
 confidence in his integrity and ability, he succeeded 
 in placing it on the road to a higher level of pros- 
 perity than before.
 
 1841 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 THE BEGINNING OF WORK. 
 
 IN view of his approaching ordination, as we have 
 already seen, William Butler had begun to seek 
 for a title for Holy Orders. Through a cousin he 
 obtained an introduction to the Rev. Charles 
 Dyson, Rector of Dogmersfield in Hampshire. Mr. 
 Dyson was a man of great learning and ability ; 
 he had been a Scholar of Corpus, where he became 
 the intimate friend of John Keble, Arnold, and 
 J. T. Coleridge. Dean Stanley in his life of Dr. 
 Arnold, says of Charles Dyson that his " remarkable 
 love for historical and geographical research, and 
 his proficiency in it, with his clear judgement, 
 quiet humour, and mildness in communicating infor- 
 mation made him particularly attractive to Arnold." 
 But his religious views were those of Keble and 
 Newman, and he was a firm though quiet sup- 
 porter of the " Oxford Movement." At the age of 
 twenty-four he became Rawlinsonian Professor of 
 Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, but he 
 relinquished this post in 1816 when he took orders,
 
 22 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 and after holding livings in Yorkshire and Essex, 
 he was presented to Dogmersfield in 1836, and 
 there remained till his death in 1860. " He was 
 an admirable parish priest, and a man of deep 
 learning, though he shrank from authorship." 1 There 
 can be no doubt that he exercised a great influence 
 over William Butler's mind, and that to his example 
 and instruction much of his curate's successful work 
 was due. 
 
 THE REV. CHARLES DYSON TO W. J. B. 
 
 DOGMERSFIELD, February 9, 1841, 
 HARTFORD BRIDGE. 
 
 DEAR SIR, You will naturally have expected some com- 
 munication before this, touching the curacy of Dogmersfield ; 
 but owing to my total inability to do anything personally 
 during this unfortunate weather, we have had more difficulties 
 about houses, etc., than I anticipated; and it was indeed only 
 on Sunday afternoon that Mr. Lefroy (my present curate) 
 gave me any information that we could act upon : yesterday, 
 I am sorry to say, was one of my drooping days. 
 
 First, respecting the time of entering upon the curacy. I 
 wrote to the bishop the day after you left us, to enquire 
 whether he could grant letters dimissory in case his own 
 ordination was too late. His answer was that his ordination 
 would not take place before July, and that he never gave 
 letters dimissory unless under particular circumstances, which 
 did not apply to your case. Mr. Lefroy, however, kindly 
 undertook to sound him again at an interview he was to have 
 with him about other matters. This interview he had on 
 Saturday last. The bishop was still firm in his refusal about 
 letters dimissory ; but good-naturedly said he would provide 
 for the Sunday duty during Mr. Lefroy 's absence in May. 
 I believe we shall have no difficulty about the duty till the 
 time of ordination in July. For in May I trust to be equal 
 to the parochial charge myself. 
 
 1 Diet. Nat. Biog. " C. Dyson."
 
 1846 LETTER FROM REV. C. DYSON 23 
 
 Secondly, as to houses, we have had more delays about them 
 than was expected. . . . Word was sent me on Saturday 
 that we could have one at Odiham, which might do for pupils : 
 and on Sunday Mr. Lefroy brought me information that he 
 had found one at Crondall (the village where his family live) 
 which he thought would suit you completely, at a rent of 
 24. This of all the houses that have been mentioned to 
 us seems most desirable, as being nearest to the church and 
 village ; distant two miles and two miles and a half respectively. 
 You have now all the information I can give you at present, 
 and all indeed that is immediately necessary to your decision 
 about your plans. I think, however, I should treat neither 
 you nor my parish fairly if I did not set before you for 
 very serious consideration a doubt that has suggested itself 
 to my own thoughts, and, as I find in conversation, to the 
 thoughts of others ; it is this. Whether under the circum- 
 stances of your just entering so responsible a profession, with 
 so slight a preparation for its demands and duties as you 
 candidly acknowledged when here, it would be advisable to 
 encumber yourself with pupils for the first year or two, during 
 your professional engagements. I believe I speak the sentiments 
 of experienced men, when I suggest that you will find it 
 difficult to combine the management of pupils even with 
 professional reading; a difficulty that will be much enhanced 
 if joined with the care of a parish, however small, at a distance. 
 For though I trust that during the summer months I shall 
 be able to help you much, both in parochial and Sunday 
 duties, I fear I cannot promise great assistance in the pulpit, 
 that being the difficult matter to my weak lungs. In winter, 
 I must if I follow the advice of my physician, leave the 
 parish entirely to your charge, in all points at least that 
 require personal attendance. If you would take this suggestion 
 into your serious consideration, and decide accordingly to begin 
 without pupils, you will find it less difficult to suit yourself 
 with a residence, and what is more to be valued, more able 
 to give up your time to your profession. Then after some 
 experience of its demands, you will be better able to judge 
 of its compatibility with the care of pupils. There is always 
 much to learn in the entrance of any profession, and I do 
 not know that this ought to be considered less exacting than
 
 24 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 any other, where there is so much to be done, so much to 
 be accounted for. There may be circumstances of another 
 kind, however, that require you to decide otherwise; and it 
 would be an intrusion on my part to enter on any considera- 
 tion about them. 1 
 
 As a good deal of time has necessarily been disposed of in 
 our enquiries and difficulties here, it would be a convenience 
 to me if you could come to an early decision and communicate 
 it to me. If you decide to give me your assistance, such 
 decision will enable me to be useful on many interesting 
 points. If you decide against it, it will enable me to look 
 to other quarters for help. In either case the sooner the 
 better. 
 
 Butler wrote to a relation in January 1841 : 
 
 . . . For the last two or three weeks my thoughts have 
 been mainly employed on the subject of Holy Orders, and the 
 deep and fearful responsibility therewith connected. Most 
 truly do I feel my own incorn potency, though most desirous 
 and willing to do my duty, and the great advantage of be- 
 ginning my labours under the tuition of Mr. Dyson. But 
 as I am entirely at present dependent upon myself, and as 
 I cannot say when those whom I love far more dearly than 
 myself may to a certain extent be also dependent upon me, 
 and also as it would be a sorry return for Mr. Dyson's 
 kindness to saddle his parish with a pauper curate, I was 
 anxious, before I gave a definite answer, to make myself sure 
 in the matter of pupils. ... I am almost certain of having 
 two pupils, though if I have but one, I will not hesitate to 
 accept so agreeable a situation. 
 
 He was ordained Deacon at the ensuing July 
 ordination, and took a house in the neighbouring 
 parish of Crondall. 
 
 While here he became acquainted through the 
 
 1 The straitened means of the Butler family were found to make 
 the taking of pupils a necessity, and in the long run this did not 
 interfere with his parochial duties.
 
 1846 ORDAINED PRIEST 25 
 
 Dysons with several of their friends who had taken 
 part in the Oxford Movement, such as John Keble, 
 H. E. Manning, Henry Wilberforce, and Charles 
 Marriott. There can be no doubt that this had a 
 powerful effect in determining the character of his 
 religious convictions, and under Mr. Dyson he formed 
 a very high conception of a clergyman's duties and 
 the responsibility of his office. 
 
 A letter from one of his sisters describes his 
 ordination as Priest at Farnham Castle. 
 
 CRONDALL, July 11, 1842. 
 
 We left this at a little after nine yesterday morning. The 
 morning was bright and beautiful, but none of us talked much, 
 as we were thinking of solemn things. . . . About half to 
 eleven we set off for the Castle. It was an odd sight to see 
 troops of men in gowns and hoods winding up the steep hill. 
 (One deacon was lame.) When we got up the hill a laughable 
 sight presented itself. The deacon out of the trap putting on 
 his gown and hood under the hedge, like a professional hedge- 
 preacher. The simple vestry work over, we four clomb the 
 hill, the deacon following looking very grave. Then we 
 marched through a long room, deacons and priests on either 
 side in gowns and hoods, some M.A., some B.A., to the 
 drawing room. There we (ladies) sat down and then Mr. 
 Jacob came flitting about to arrange the candidates for or- 
 dination. ... At eleven precisely the people were all settled 
 in their places. I saw very well where I was placed. Mr. 
 
 (who apes the bishop) read the morning service. Then 
 
 Dr. Dealtry " praught " a long sermon with little meaning 
 
 in it, but looked triumphant at intervals. . . . We 
 
 had luncheon at the Castle, and then returned to Miss Barlow's, 
 being too tired body and mind to go to afternoon service. 
 They were most kind to us, and made us stay and dine with 
 them ; at half-past six we went to evening service at Farnham 
 church, and on our return we found William returned from 
 the Castle.
 
 26 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 In the course of this year he became engaged 
 to his second cousin, Miss Emma Barnett, daughter 
 of George Henry Barnett, Esq., head of the banking 
 firm of Barnett, Hoare & Co. Mrs. Barnett was 
 the daughter of Stratford Canning, and sister of 
 Lord Stratford de Kedcliffe, and of William Canning, 
 Canon of Windsor, who afterwards presented his 
 niece's husband to the living of Wantage. To make 
 the connexion more intelligible it may be said 
 that William Butler's maternal grandfather, Capt. 
 Kobert Patrick, was brother of Miss Barnett's 
 maternal grandmother, Mrs. Stratford Canning. 
 
 His old friend C. J. Vaughan wrote on hearing 
 of his approaching marriage : 
 
 May 16, 1843. 
 
 Do not be angry with me for offering you my heartiest 
 congratulations on the prospect of your marriage, which I 
 believe will be a real blessing to you, so far from thinking 
 the contrary. And pray do not be above marrying with 
 pupils. I am sure my brother is as happy as a man can 
 be, though he takes pupils. 
 
 Shortly before his marriage he moved from 
 Dogmersfield to the curacy of Puttenham, near 
 Guildford, where he had the sole charge of the 
 parish, and continued to take pupils. On the 29th 
 
 July, 1843, his marriage took place at Putney, 1 
 
 
 
 1 The newly married couple visited Hursley on their way to 
 France. Mr. Keble wrote to his brother, Rev. T. Keble : 
 
 H. V., Aug. 1, 1843. 
 
 . . . We are here quite in the bridal line. . . . Behold at church 
 were Mr. Butler, Dyson's late curate, and his bride, Miss Emma
 
 1846 
 
 INCUMBENT OF WARESIDE 
 
 27 
 
 where his eldest son, Arthur John, was born the 
 following year. 
 
 In 1844 he was appointed as first incumbent 
 of the newly formed parish of Wareside which had 
 been previously part of the extensive parish of 
 Ware. Through the exertions of a former vicar 
 of Ware, the Rev. H. Coddington, a chapel 
 dedicated to the Holy Trinity had been built at 
 a cost of 1,800, to accommodate 400 people. The 
 population was about 700. As there was no glebe 
 house, William Butler took a house in the adjoining 
 parish of Amwell. Some extracts from his private 
 diary will give an idea of his life at Wareside, and 
 of the spirit in which he devoted all his powers 
 of mind and body to his parishioners' welfare, at 
 the very outset of his life as a parish priest. 
 
 Things in my parish have now got into some train. Our 
 schools are working. The people seem to feel that they have 
 a minister and church. Our Clothing Club numbers 140. 
 We have visited every parishioner, and on the whole there 
 seems a fair spirit of obedience to the Church, and desire to 
 be taught and act. My great difficulty is, of course, the lack 
 of a dwelling on the spot, which, although I do not dislike 
 the drive there and back, yet cannot but put me in a great 
 degree in the footing of a stranger to those among whom I 
 ought to be most familiar. 
 
 . . . This is the 1st [sic] Sunday after Christmas Day, 
 the continuation, as it were, of the Feast of Circumcision. Of 
 course, I felt myself bound to preach as well as I could, in 
 allusion to that feast, but then came the difficulty. Here am 
 
 Barnett that was, who did us the honour of including us in their 
 wedding tour ; so I shewed them round the parish, and very nice 
 folk they be or seem to be.
 
 28 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 I in a parish of which, I am sure, nine-tenths understand not 
 a single word of the event in question, intricate too to explain, 
 embarrassed with allusions to the Jewish Law, of which, 
 perhaps, all were ignorant. Yet it is impossible to pass these 
 things, these great feasts, carelessly over; it is really too much 
 for the conscience to be talking of irrelevant matters when 
 these great acts of our redemption are concerned. The people 
 here seem hardly to feel Christmas Day. I observed that they 
 wore their working-day clothes, and a very scanty attendance 
 at church in proportion to that on Sundays. This seems 
 to be the case very generally throughout the country. The 
 people have utterly lost sight of the great Christian feasts, 
 and with them the knowledge of the mighty events they 
 celebrated. The Popish ways may be all very bad, but at 
 least they teach something of the grounds of our faith 
 and salvation. The religion of the English peasant is all 
 confined to generalities. It consists pretty nearly in this : 
 A general notion that Christ died for sinners, but of Christi 
 His Nature or Person, absolutely nothing, nor how He died, 
 nor for what kind of sinners ; that it is all right to go to 
 church on Sundays, perhaps better twice ; that we are all 
 sinners, none better than his neighbours, but as to any con- 
 fession of particular sin it irritates them to be exhorted to it; 
 utterly no notion of self-denial for almsgiving, no notion of 
 earnest hearty prayer, nor of giving the attention, and striving 
 to make out and practise the preacher's words. I do not 
 mean to say that this, even this, is the worst temper of mind 
 with which a minister can have to deal, or even that all are 
 of it, but that, this being the case, it becomes particularly 
 hard to teach. You can never, or very hardly, find any 
 foundation to rest on. If you talk of the Jewish Church, 
 they really associate no ideas with it ; of the Apostles, I doubt 
 whether they know in the least who they are; of Jacob, 
 Isaac, Abraham, they are equally ignorant. They do, perhaps, 
 know who Adam and Eve were, and why they were driven 
 from Paradise ; also of the Flood, but all the rest of the Old 
 Testament is absolutely a dead letter to them. They hardly 
 hear, certainly do not understand, one out of twenty lessons. 
 In fact, it seems as if our Protestant mode of reading huge 
 masses of Scripture were utterly defeating its own aim. The
 
 1846 PROBLEMS 29 
 
 poor do not for the most part know the Bible. Ask any one 
 what the lessons were about, any Sunday you please, and you 
 will soon find the truth of my words. So this morning I had 
 to explain as well as I could, though I feel most imperfectly 
 the whole matter. I began a sermon last night, but was so 
 dissatisfied with it that I threw it bodily into the fire at past 
 eight o'clock. It seemed so unlike what a sermon should be 
 to be giving a bald account of the Institution of the Law ; 
 going from Adam through the whole of the Bible in twelve or 
 fourteen pages seemed really too absurd. As it was, I con- 
 tracted my account very much, merely stating that the 
 Circumcision was the initiatory rite to the Jewish Law, 
 which Law, I said, was given to the Jews to keep them 
 from the heathen and to point to the Messiah. The Messiah 
 (now I am sure they did not understand this) destroyed this 
 Law in fulfilling it, and thereby left us an example of obedi- 
 ence, as well as by the course of doing so working out our 
 salvation. This was the tenor of my sermon. The men's 
 side, as usual, was full, but I cannot get the women to attend 
 church in the morning. Twenty women is an average. They 
 naturally stay at home to cook their husbands' dinners, or 
 fancy that they do. The most of these who do come have 
 husbands, who, I suppose, want their dinners as much as the 
 others. 
 
 The present incumbent, the Eev. Robert Higgens, 
 has noted down some " recollections " gleaned from 
 old Wareside parishioners. 
 
 The last entry by Mr. Butler in the Kegister of Baptisms is 
 November 10, 1846. 
 
 Walter Tween, the churchwarden, to whom Butler's " Sermons 
 for Working Men " are dedicated, removed from the New House, 
 Wareside, after the death of his father, soon after Mr. Butler left. 
 He has ever since resided at Widford. Walter Tween, now 
 upwards of eighty years of age, ever speaks of Mr. Butler in 
 enthusiastic and affectionate terms. The other day, since the 
 death of the Dean and Mrs. Butler, I paid Walter Tween a visit. 
 Personal recollections came up at hazard, as, " I went on a visit 
 to Mr. Butler at Wantage. The next day was a general fast
 
 30 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 day. 'Now, Walter, you will have nothing but bread and salt 
 to-morrow. I don't call it a fast to have salt fish and sauce, 
 and then other things as well.' So nothing but bread and salt 
 we had, but they did not seem to mind it." 
 
 When the Dean visited me on the occasion of our Church 
 Jubilee in 1891, he went to see Walter Tween. Walter told 
 me how he seemed to be just the Mr. Butler of old times. 
 
 All the old people remember Mrs. Butler as actively sharing 
 in her husband's labours. The old women say she was such a 
 plain lady, not, however, at all referring to her features, or to 
 plainness or directness of talk, but to the simplicity of her 
 attire, silently rebuking feminine vanity. On my coming here 
 as incumbent in 1855, I found a godson of Mrs. Butler's 
 characteristically named "Alban" Blake. The names of most 
 of the god-parents were set down in the baptismal register. 
 
 We had orders annually to provide a suit of clothes for Alban 
 up to his confirmation time. 
 
 Of those who looked forward with great interest to the Dean's 
 visit at the Church Jubilee in 1891, none was so eager as Charles 
 
 K . He had been, as a young man, scholar in the night school 
 
 when Mr. Butler lived at Castlebury, in the latter part of his 
 time. Charles seemed as though he could not enough testify 
 his satisfaction when he saw his old clergyman again. The Dean 
 well remembered him. A particular spelling lesson lingered in 
 his memory : " Now, Charles, a, x, e, what does that spell ? " 
 " Surely," says Charles to himself, " I do not know justly, but 
 it must be some tool that I use ; a, x, e bill ! " 
 
 Then we have, living now in her 90th year, the original 
 
 caretaker and factotum of the church, Mrs. S . She held office 
 
 from 1841 to 1882 a woman not without her good qualities, 
 being honest and trustworthy, but somewhat tart in speech. 
 She remembers how Mr. Butler would come down from Castle- 
 bury, for very early service, with his lantern, lighting along the 
 little flock he had gathered on the way. 
 
 The beginning of a correspondence with Mr. Keble 
 dates from this period.
 
 1846 LETTER FROM REV. J. KEBLE 31 
 
 REV. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 HUESLEY VICARAGE, July 28, 1845. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. BUTLER, I return you Mr. 's letters, and 
 
 also the queries of the pseudo Catholic, for both which, specimens 
 of very different sorts, I am much obliged. As to the querist, 
 I felt a strong inclination to help him to one question more 
 against the next edition : viz. (see queries 7 and 1 4), " Do you 
 not perceive what a security liberal principles are against ill 
 tempers, since those who hold them may use words which sound 
 like sneering (e.g. Mr. Deacon Palmer's polemics), of course 
 without any 'sourness' at all." 
 
 I sent the other papers to Pusey as you kindly permitted me, 
 and he seems, as you may suppose, greatly pleased with them, 
 especially with the notion in one of them about making a 
 country parson's cottage the rudiments of a sort of monastery. 
 P. expressed a little surprise that one should encourage a man 
 of that stamp to go abroad when there is so much to be done 
 at home. He is always very jealous on that score. I mentioned 
 also to him your suggestion about a " Retreat," which he heartily 
 enters into, and thinks Isaac Williams the person for it, and his 
 neighbourhood the place. I mean shortly to start it to Isaac, 
 but I am a little afraid of his shrinking from it for some reasons. 
 Probably we shall go to Bisley soon, and then it may be all 
 talked over. I love to think over the day you spent with us. 
 God grant that all may go on as you wish ; and I hope you will 
 go among many old croakers, and do them as much good as you 
 did me. 
 
 My wife, I think, is a little more hearty than she was then. 
 Mr. Parker left us this morning, taking Netley on his way to 
 London. With our very kind regards, believe me, yours ever 
 affectionately, J. KEBLE. 
 
 You left a sermon of Pusey's here. If you will get another I 
 will pay for it through the Dysons. 
 
 MRS. C. DYSON TO W. J. B. 
 
 DOGMERSFIELD, Nov. 18, [1845]. 
 
 . . . For yourself, dear W., what more can your friends 
 wish for you than that you should feel, as you now do, the fear
 
 32 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 of clinging too much to domestic happiness, and the benefit of 
 being sometimes deprived of it? ... It is a great comfort 
 in the fierce storm we are passing through to know what you 
 say of yourself. Every one who weathers a point seems to be 
 now a great help to others, in spite of all the subdivisions of 
 opinion amongst them. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 CASTLE BURY, NEAR WARE, 
 December 16, 1845. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I have been very anxious to write to you for 
 some months past, almost ever since our visit to Hursley in 
 the summer. But chiefly, I believe, because I did not like to 
 trouble you at this particular time, both on account of the 
 time of sorrow and doubtfulness, and especially when we heard 
 so poor an account of dear Mrs. Keble, I have always put it off. 
 
 Now, however, I am driven to write by a pressing note 
 from Burns for the enclosed sermons which have been some 
 time in type. In the summer you kindly promised to look 
 at them, and advise me of any serious blunder, of which 
 I do not feel at all secure. They are written to supply the 
 wants of my own parish, who are perhaps more than usually 
 uneducated. And yet, when I came to examine others, 
 servants, small shopkeepers, and the like, I found so dense 
 an ignorance on all religious subjects, and so much misap- 
 prehension and distortion of important truths, words seeming 
 to have literally no meaning in their mouths, that I hope 
 they may be useful to others. I have rather endeavoured to 
 place pictures before them, and to make them realise what I 
 talked about, so that they might talk about it among them- 
 selves when they get home. If you think that they are 
 likely to do harm, or even not to do good, I am sure I 
 should not wish to add to the great floating capital of sermons 
 in print. Recent matters certainly, in a degree, alter the 
 interest one takes in a work of the kind, making one write 
 with less certainty, and entirely doing away with the esprit 
 de corps feeling, yet as I do not know why I am not what 
 I have always supposed I was, a Minister of the English 
 Church, I suppose I ought to try to do the best I can as
 
 1846 DESIRE FOR A RETREAT 33 
 
 such. Connected with this is the other matter, about which 
 I meant very much to ask you, the "Retreat." I am certain 
 that hardly a day has passed on which it has not come 
 forcibly before me. If we are to be a Church, surely our 
 clergy must become holy. And I know personally a very large 
 number who, partly from defective superintendence, partly 
 from natural badness, passed the whole time of school and 
 college in a most reckless and unholy way. Then perhaps 
 in a year, without any sort of cur/c^o-is, but merely the repent- 
 ance of a heart not knowing its own sinfulness and yet not 
 wholly devilish, they were ordained. Many of these, my own 
 personal friends, are now repenting most bitterly ; their sins 
 are lying like a heavy load upon them, and torturing them 
 indescribably. They long to confess and go through some 
 prescribed penance. . . . And of course, the same feeling of the 
 weight of unrepented sin hinders them very much in their 
 daily work. Sinful recollections are not cleared away. They 
 seem to recur in the most holy seasons. Prayers are 
 deadened. And it seems gross hypocrisy to be talking to 
 others, and trying to raise them to a high standard of 
 religious feeling. And independently of all this, I can only 
 say for myself that I am in the greatest fear of having all 
 my work secularised. The constant dealing with holy things 
 without any intermission of prayer and watchfulness and 
 fasting and self-examination I find most hardening. Mr. 
 Butterfield said to me the other day that it startled him to 
 see how little reverence for holy places was in men who 
 profess High Church principles, and who certainly started 
 with it. 
 
 I am sure that the requisite money would be provided at 
 once, if only some one who could be relied upon would take 
 the thing up. If Mr. Isaac Williams or Mr. Marriott would 
 but take a house and let men come to it for five or six or 
 eight weeks every year, I suppose in different parties, according 
 as it suited, the whole seems provided for. And really one 
 does not see how our priests are to be made hoi}' in any 
 other way. 
 
 Pray forgive me for troubling you with all this. But it is 
 very near my heart, and I feel almost hopeless of myself unless 
 I can tear myself from the routine of work and get under 
 
 c
 
 34 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 some rule of life from time to time. And I know that it is 
 the case with so many others Of the men of my standing at 
 Cambridge I think very few escaped, and I should think it 
 was much the same at Oxford. And how is it possible for 
 the work of such not to be inherently rotten? I feel very 
 much ashamed of sending all this to you. 
 
 My wife and myself are very anxious to hear of Mrs. Keble. 
 As Dogmersfield has not said anything lately, we concluded 
 that she was better. Pray remember us both most kindly to 
 her, although this does not half express what we should like 
 to say. A. is growing a fat, strong boy. 
 
 I need not say that the more faults found the more thankful 
 I shall be. 
 
 KEY. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 Ash Wednesday, 1846. 
 
 As I hear you have been in Oxford, I daresay you have 
 long ago obtained an answer to the inquiry which you sent 
 me, far more satisfactory than I can send. Why I have been 
 so tardy I can scarce say ; except that it is I. Marriott wrote 
 me word that he thought something in the nature of a Eetreat 
 might be managed at Leeds, under the clergy of St. Saviour's. 
 But failing that he seemed to say it was not impossible that 
 he might be able to do something towards such a plan, especially 
 if a negotiation succeeded which he was then engaged in with 
 Newman for the loan of the house at Littlemore. You probably 
 saw him, and know all this better than I do; and know also 
 that our dear Isaac Williams is in such a state as to make it 
 impossible to look to him; though his decline is very gradual, 
 and the last accounts have seemed as if he were a little better : 
 but the doctors think the same as before of the case. 
 
 If you attend the meetings of the C.C.S., 1 or are in corre- 
 spondence with them, I should be glad of a private answer to 
 this question : Whether a church built of rough granite had 
 better have its quoins of Caen stone or of granite ashlar, the 
 windows being Caen stone? 
 
 Cambridge Camden Society.
 
 1846 NEED OF SPIRITUAL HELP 35 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 CASTLE BURY, WARE, March 5, 1846. 
 
 I am sure you need not apologise for not writing a reply 
 to such as me. But I hope you will be so good on a future 
 occasion when you should have cause to do so, as to say how 
 you yourself are, for I only heard by accident from one whom 
 I saw on Sunday, that you had been confined to your room 
 for some time. I enclose you two opinions on the question you 
 propose, which you will see coincide both in argument and 
 conclusion. One is from Butterfield (1), the other (2) from 
 Webb, acting pro C.C.S., on an official sheet. Neither of them 
 knows for whom I ask the question. So that I hope you will be 
 satisfied on this point. I was in Oxford for but one day, and 
 that was spent entirely in one place. Indeed, I went there 
 merely to see Dr. Pusey, and to be away from every one ; I 
 don't know why I should hesitate to mention it to you ; to make 
 a general confession to him. Of course my thoughts were on 
 this one subject, and though I had said something to him some 
 days before in London about the Retreat, yet we did not recur 
 to it. I can only say that I feel more than ever anxious to 
 see something of the kind established. I believe it would save 
 directly and indirectly many souls, raising the fallen, and 
 strengthening those that stand. For now that it is beginning 
 to be comparatively common for men to make a general 
 confession, it becomes a very serious question, as it seems to 
 me, what they are to do for the future. As far as I know, 
 though many are desirous to make a confession, and to continue 
 it as a habit through life, the thing is all but impossible. Those 
 few who are in the habit of taking general confessions are fully 
 occupied without the addition of having to act as constant 
 spiritual guides. But men might go to a Retreat periodically, 
 and there receive the advantage of regular confession, and the 
 continual preparation for it. When the eye is not single it seems 
 very fearful to have to guide oneself. Pray forgive me for saying 
 all this, but I feel it so strongly that I could not help it, as 
 you mentioned the subject. Littlemore would, I should think, 
 be the very place. ... I am going shortly to trouble you 
 with a few more sermons, but I hope you will not hesitate, if 
 you think good, to send them back unread.
 
 36 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 We are on the point of beginning our house. My wife begs 
 to be very affectionately remembered to Mrs. Keble and yourself. 
 Our little ones are very hearty, and A.'s hair is as curly as 
 ever. 
 
 June, 1846, brought the offer of Wantage, a living 
 in the gift of the Dean and Chapter of Windsor, 
 vacant by the death of the Hon. H. L. Hobart, D.D., 
 Dean of Windsor, which was made by Mrs. Butler's 
 uncle, William Canning, Canon of Windsor. The 
 living was a good one from a pecuniary point of 
 view, and had been held for a century and a half by 
 non-resident vicars, who placed a curate in the 
 vicarage on a very modest stipend. The place, an 
 ancient little market town lying on the northern 
 edge of the Berkshire Downs, offered few attractions 
 except the opportunity which it gave of hard work 
 for the Church on " Tractarian " principles. It had, 
 however, been the birthplace of two eminent English- 
 men King Alfred and Bishop Butler. This gave 
 the place, insignificant in itself, a certain distinction. 
 Letters written at the time give William Butler's 
 first impressions of the future scene of his labours, 
 and the misgivings and anxieties with which he 
 entered on w T hat proved to be the chief work of his 
 life. 
 
 \V. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 BEAK IKN, WANTAGE, 
 Sunday Evening [June, 1846]. 
 
 . . . My friend here is "Boots," a most agreeable person- 
 age, who lionised me over the town, and with whom I 
 confer on train lists, etc. I suspect he guesses my errand, 
 for he just informed me confidentially that he heard great
 
 1846 FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF WANTAGE 37 
 
 praise of my performance this morning. Sexton in gallery 
 declared he heard the words as clear as if he was close to me. 
 I mention this because one wants rather to know what 
 impression a most deliberate intonation produces in a new 
 place. ... At the station when I got my ticket a young 
 man, hearing me ask for Faringdon Road, asked if I were 
 going to Wantage. He was. I thought I might pick him a 
 little, and so we joined company. But he knew very little 
 about it. He was a banker's clerk, seemed simple-minded 
 and good; we took a gig together from Faringdon Road to 
 Wantage. I paid chiefly, but saved something by this 
 arrangement. Arrived here at twelve. Took a glass of ale 
 and went to bed, tired as many cats. This morning I got up 
 
 early and indited a note to Mr. B , l explaining my case. He 
 
 answered me very kindly, asking me to dinner, etc. He is a very 
 short fat little man, perhaps fifty-six years of age or less, very 
 kind and hospitable, with a good deal of general knowledge 
 and fun about him. I like him very much indeed. I took 
 morning service. Really, at times, owing to the strange 
 differences in singing, the slovenly way of conducting the 
 services, the Communion service from reading desk, etc., I 
 hardly knew what I was doing. It seemed so very odd to 
 
 end with the Nicene Creed. B 's sermon was drier than 
 
 hay. Not a word of sense in it. I only wonder so many 
 people can sit through such discourses. I was as fidgety as 
 possible, and were I likely to undergo such things continually 
 I must join one of the sects with which Wantage is rife. 
 Lengthy, too. "This leads me to consider," and all that. 
 Sermon over I went to his house. I wished to preach in the 
 evening solely to escape another of these preachments. But 
 I thought I might be caught out if I praught from type, so, 
 after considering the pros and cons, I determined not. ... I 
 
 dined with Mr. B . After dinner we walked to Grove, in 
 
 the patronage of Wantage. The church and parsonage were 
 built by Dr. Cotton, of Worcester. And who, think you, is 
 the incumbent 1 ? Mr. Simcox Bricknell, the man who wrote 
 circulars about the Tractarians. He was at home, and not a 
 bad fellow after all. Now it is past eleven. To-morrow I 
 shall leave this at a half to seven, get to Didcot, thence to 
 1 The curate in charge.
 
 38 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 Oxford, where I shall call on Dr. Pusey. Then to Reading, 
 whence I shall to Dogmersfield. . . . There will be a 
 terrible coil about building. There is scarcely any glebe. 
 Garden is sunk ; churchyard cramped ; house stands very low ; 
 air is bracing, so you will grow fat. Wantage Downs are 
 famous. I like the looks of the people. They speak a very 
 rough dialect. If we have this it mil make a strange difference 
 in our way of living, not our household arrangements, but in 
 all our thoughts and ways. I tremble to think of it. And 
 yet, on the whole, I rather hope my advisers will bid me take 
 
 it. If have it, he will not reside. He came here immediately 
 
 after the Dean's death and saw Mr. B . This is, of course, 
 
 a consideration. I can no more. This is horrid rubbish, but 
 my pen has been steaming along. 
 
 P.S. I have seen Dr. Pusey. He rests on Mr. Dyson, but 
 considers it doubtful \vhether I ought to leave my present 
 charge. 
 
 W. J. B. TO J. L. BUTLER, ESQ. 
 
 [June 29, 1846.] 
 
 MY DEAR FATHER, I wished to get Mr. Dyson's letter before 
 writing to you again. We seemed to have exhausted all argu- 
 ments on both sides of the question, all that remained being the 
 actual decision. Mr. Dyson writes thus : " So far from altering 
 the view I took respecting your acceptance of Wantage, recon- 
 sideration only confirms me in the opinion I gave you when 
 here, that on the balance of pros and cons it was advisable 
 that you should accept it. It was, indeed, chiefly on the 
 consideration of the very great usefulness to that large parish 
 . . . that I thought it advisable for you to give up your 
 present charge at Wareside in exchange for Wantage. It 
 certainly gives you a noble opportunity of doing God service 
 through His Church, and acting on essential Church principles. 
 At the same time I must say that, unless I were confident you 
 would act on such principles both conscientiously and judiciously, 
 in a spirit of charity and moderation as well as zeal, I would 
 never advise you to undertake it. Under a different spirit such 
 a parish would be a continual source of regret and discomfort 
 to one of your disposition. I anticipate also a most important
 
 1846 ACCEPTANCE OF WANTAGE 39 
 
 benefit to yourself in the larger opportunity you will have for 
 professional reading and self-communication when your time 
 and thoughts will be less distracted by so many demands from 
 pupils as you now have. I take it for granted, in saying this, 
 that you will have a good staff of curates to share your labours 
 and give you room for rest." He writes on most kindly and 
 sensibly, but this is the gist of his letter. So that I now hesitate 
 no longer. I wrote to Mr. Canning by this morning's post to 
 advise him of this, and I shall expect to hear very soon from 
 the Chapter Clerk. I saw the Bishop of Oxford on Friday at 
 the House of Lords. He was very kind and bland, and told 
 me distinctly that he thought I ought to accept the charge, 
 looking on it as a sort of call. Also he perfectly agreed to my 
 intention of remaining here for some months to come. In the 
 course of a few weeks I shall go there again, and make various 
 inquiries about the condition of the house, dilapidations, etc. 
 
 W. J. B. TO 
 
 AM WELL, WARE, July 9, 1846. 
 
 ... In this matter of Wantage it seems to me strange 
 that you should not understand how very serious a thing it is 
 for one like myself, only 28 years old, and very much off the 
 sort of study and preparation which a country town needs, to 
 take upon myself the care of 3000 souls, living souls, to 
 prepare for eternity. It certainly seems strange that you should 
 not understand that a state of doubtfulness must come over 
 me, fear for my own soul, and consideration for others. How 
 am I to solve my doubts 1 Could such considerations as position, 
 income, and the like come for a moment into calculation ? First 
 Death, then the Judgement. What have position in this miserable 
 world, income, comforts, to do with such as these? . . . 
 And then you do not understand that we should feel grief at 
 leaving a work in which we delight, and terror (I do not regret 
 the word) in undertaking so fearful a work as the charge of 
 3000 souls, who at present are in a most unsatisfactory condition. 
 How little can you know of the condition of these market 
 towns. They are the very most troublesome, most painful spots
 
 40 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 of Christ's Heritage, the Church in England. Not a clergyman 
 engaged in them but will tell you that his heart sinks within 
 him. And who am I, to take such a labour on myself? As for 
 " seeing difficulties " and the like, it would be worse than foolish 
 to shut my eyes to them. I do see the difficulties, and I only 
 pray that I may see them tenfold more strongly than I do. 
 This does not in the least imply that I shall not work hard to 
 overcome them. Of course I shall. But naturally the prospect 
 makes me sad and thoughtful. ... I own I dread the 
 congratulations of my friends on an occasion which involves so 
 fearful a responsibility. And if I were to appear to hug them, 
 I should only be deceitful. Let my friends comfort me, pray 
 for me, advise me, make allowances for me, but not congratulate 
 me as though I had gained a great step in life. When Death and 
 Judgement, Heaven and Hell, are the matters in consideration, 
 both for myself and so many others, ought I not to have done 
 as I have done shunned to the greatest possible degree every 
 worldly question ? And now to the course of life which I look 
 to pursue at Wantage. I shall indeed try to become far more 
 self-denying than I have ever been before. I shall certainly 
 spend what money I have altogether on the place, and I shall 
 try to get two or three men with me who will thoroughly 
 sympathise and work with me. If I am fit for such a work, 
 it is quite clear that I ought to be able to guide myself, or rather 
 to know where to seek for guidance. And as I have taken Mr. 
 Dyson's advice in one point, it would be foolish and wrong not 
 to carry it out. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 AMWELL, WAKE, July 22, 1846. 
 
 I thank you very much for thinking of me and mine. It is 
 indeed a strengthening to have the good wishes of so many 
 and such, but I am nevertheless very much oppressed with the 
 prospect of Wantage. I thought at one time that I should 
 like work of this kind, but now that it has come to me I dread 
 it very much. So many difficult points seem to arise how 
 much to do, how much not to do; how to encourage a Catholic 
 ^0os under the disadvantage of Protestant or Puritan ways, 
 and then that whole class of questions which connect them-
 
 1846 'BUTLER OF WANTAGE' 41 
 
 selves with Dissenters. And then one feels so much fear as 
 to how best to begin, whether to start strenuously and try to 
 gain something in this way, or to wait and watch opportunities. 
 I am not going to "Wantage till Christmas, which will give me 
 some time for reflection, and also enable me to leave this 
 place more satisfactorily. Next Monday my wife, youngsters, 
 and I myself go to Dogmersfield, she to remain a fortnight 
 there, while I go to Littlemore. I shall return to Dogmers- 
 field on Monday, August 10. We should like very much to 
 spend a day at Hursley, if you could take us in. And we 
 could bring or leave our little ones as would be most con- 
 venient to you and Mrs. Keble. . . . May I trouble you 
 to look at the enclosed ? 
 
 My wife desires me to say how often she thinks of the 
 kindness of Mrs. Keble and yourself. A. has quite outgrown 
 babyhood. 
 
 REV. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 HUKSLEY, Aug. 3, 1846. 
 
 Forgive my not answering you sooner. I cannot say that I 
 have much excuse, for I have had a sort of sore throat which 
 has kept me from duty, and pretty much at home, so that I 
 had not much to do besides answering letters. But somehow 
 it has crept on from day to day. I don't wonder at your 
 many musings about Wantage, but I feel so sure that you are 
 right in going there, that I cannot doubt your being guided, 
 from day to day, and from week to week, to the right course 
 of proceeding. It is a good omen, Butler of Wantage. And 
 Littlemore, I trust, will be a good preparation for it. We 
 shall be very glad to see you here next week, if you can 
 manage it; but, unfortunately, we are unable to give you 
 much choice of time. I am going, I believe, to Leamington 
 on Monday, the 10th, for one day only, and on the 13th we 
 rather expect some of the Irish Lefroys, who will fill our 
 house; so that you seem put up between the llth and 12th, if 
 it must be that week. If those days, or any part of them, will 
 suit you, we shall be very glad to see you, all four. 
 
 I have read your sermons l twice over, with much interest, 
 1 Sermons for Working Men. Masters. 1847.
 
 42 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 and have made a few corrections which I hope will not puzzle 
 you or the printer. I should say that some of the sentences 
 would be the better for shortening. I will just ask you in 
 reference to what you say in p. 92 as to the mystical inter- 
 pretation Should you not suppose it in the present rather a 
 matter of tradition from the Apostles, however the details of 
 it are the reward of holy lives and persevering study 1 
 
 I am very desirous of finding someone who will undertake 
 the Curacy of Shoreditch under an old friend of mine, an 
 excellent but a very nervous fellow the stipend 100 a 
 year with a house said to be worth 50 only it is very 
 uncomfortable, as I daresay you know, from the JFare-ishness 
 of the people, as well as the hard work. If someone would 
 have the same mind with which you go to Wantage, that 
 would be just the thing. How glad I should be if you did 
 happen to know of any one. Will it be giving you too much 
 trouble to inquire at Cambridge for me. 
 
 W. J. B. TO KEY. J. KEBLE. 
 
 LITTLEMORE, Friday [Aug., 1846]. 
 
 Thank you very much for your kind words and the trouble 
 you have taken for my sermons. I fear that I shall not be able 
 to get the corrections (much as they are wanted) made in p. 86, 
 for that sermon is the fair proof, after the revise, merely printed 
 off to fill up the sheet. Not having my books about me I really 
 cannot find whence I got that mystical interpretation. My im- 
 pression is that some outline of it struck me some time ago, but 
 that I feared to write it till I found it confirmed. If I mistake 
 not, the same view is more or less worked out in ' the Nativity.' 
 I do feel it the greatest comfort in this Wantage business that I 
 am not following my own guidance, and that so many hold one 
 view on the subject. If only I am strong enough for it (I don't 
 mean ph} r sically), it is of course important for the spread of true 
 Church principles that I should not decline it, being that probably 
 it would be passed on to some other views. I have long felt, 
 though I never thought myself fit but for the very smallest 
 approach to such a work, that farmers and shopkeepers should be 
 leavened with the Church. At present they are heathens in all 
 but one thing. Marriott's College seems the way of doing it,
 
 1846 A CAMBRIDGE HOSPITIUM 43 
 
 giving these classes a vested interest, so to speak, in the clergy. 
 I cannot help thinking that the domestic influence of the clergy is 
 what really tells, or at least tells most. One may see this in 
 the upper ranks, where a son in Holy Orders will leaven a whole 
 ' gens.' And one should suppose that the same would tell with 
 even greater force in the lower and less educated classes. But I 
 cannot help thinking that a parish priest may, if he have the 
 right way of setting to work, manage a good deal of this. I am 
 not quite sure whether ' Butler of Wantage ' is not, on a calcula- 
 tion of chances, against me. One should suppose that he would 
 exhaust the powers of Wantage to produce Butlers, and that 
 future B.'s would [be] the poorest of their species. 
 
 All this time I have not said that the two days which you 
 mention are the very two that suit us best Tuesday and Wed- 
 nesday and we will find our way to Hursley by an afternoon 
 train. I must leave this to my wife to settle, as she knows the 
 trains and I do not. She will write. I have enjoyed my time 
 here very much. 
 
 On reading your letter again, I see I mistook your words. I 
 thought you asked whence it came 1 I see now that you warn 
 me against a ' blundering ' way of putting it, which shall be cor- 
 rected. I will write to Cambridge, but Shoreditch will frighten 
 most men. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 CASTLE BURY, WARE, Nov. 17, 1846. 
 
 May I ask you to cast your eye over the enclosed? I feel 
 rather doubtful whether in endeavouring to make things plain and 
 popular I am not grounding too much on illustration. I was at 
 Cambridge a few weeks since, and I tried to get some men to 
 work up a cheap hostelry to be connected with a College as 
 Colleges are with the University. This seems feasible enough, 
 for all Colleges at Cambridge admit men lodging in the town, 
 and I do not well see how, when they license every tradesman 
 or other who applies, they could refuse a clergyman. This is 
 all that would be required from the authorities, and with this 
 any one willing for the work might take a house and work his 
 men as he pleased; of course, seeing that they attended Hall 
 and Chapel and kept to the other duties of their College. 
 Marriott wrote to me suggesting an old building called the
 
 44 THE BEGINNING OF WORK 1841- 
 
 School of Pythagoras for some such purpose. But we could not 
 get this, and on the whole I did not see much spirit at Cambridge 
 to commence an undertaking of the kind. Cambridge is as " flat " 
 as possible. Some of those from whom I expected most are 
 taking up queer original views of their own, as it were to hold 
 Church views without the odium connected with them, drawing 
 some little difference, just enough to say, "I don't agree 
 with so-and-so." I came away more disheartened than I ever 
 remember myself before. Cams and his friends are active 
 enough in their way, and no doubt keep up a certain degree 
 of morality and piety. But then a very large body of men 
 never can feel with them, and these are left without guide 
 or comfort. . . . We go to Wantage after Christmas. 
 
 REV. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 HURSLEY, Nov. 18, 1846. 
 
 It does not seem to me that in this sheet at least you have 
 fallen into the error which you apprehend. And I should 
 suppose that your fear of it will be a great security against it. 
 To a certain extent, I suppose it was intended that each person 
 should have his own impressions from the Parables and similes 
 of Scriptures, as in life from the very things themselves ; and 
 that those impressions, being communicated, should do good. 
 I don't remember anything in your sermons which startles one 
 as going beyond this. 
 
 Your notion of a Cambridge Hospitium seems a very good 
 one. I trust it will be borne in mind. If your friends with 
 the " queer views " will only act as such an institution requires, 
 I think we may bear with their little distinctions, which are 
 but too natural in these times, when hardly two Churchmen 
 speak alike. 
 
 All good be with you, your family, your parishes, and your 
 successor, the thought of whom must be a great comfort to you. 
 Thank you for mentioning A. 
 
 MRS. C. DYSON TO W. J. B. 
 
 [Probably about Christmas, 1846.] 
 
 . . . Thank you, from my heart, for your greetings of the 
 season, and for your gift of the Prayers, which seem to me
 
 1846 PRIVATE PRAYERS FOR THE POOR 45 
 
 more suitable than any collection we have seen ; and the 
 prefatory rules must be useful. Such a collection, I suppose, 
 always requires that the people should be trained beforehand 
 to wish for it, as your people would be. Our curate observed 
 that he wished the print were larger, because the persons most 
 likely to use the Prayers may have to use it in the dusk, and 
 he finds the bad print of good books is really a great hindrance 
 with the poor. However, in the case of daily Prayers it may 
 be supposed they will soon be learnt by heart. In the case 
 of such books as Dr. Hook's Meditations for Every Day, which 
 seems in itself so good, it is a great objection. Of course, the 
 answer is, the expense. 
 
 We understand your misgivings about Wantage. But those 
 who know you well do not misgive certainly not the Nest. 1 
 There must be much to dishearten, but still a little done, a 
 few good Church-people trained, is a great thing in such a 
 place. . . . That poor dear Wareside will always be a pleasant 
 spot in your memory. Perhaps it would have been too much 
 of a romance not to be a snare, had it gone on as hitherto ; 
 anyhow it is pleasant to know and think of. ... 
 
 1 A pet name among the Dysons' friends for Dogmersfield Rectory. 

 
 CHAPTER III. 
 TROUBLED TIMES. 
 
 THE new vicar took up his residence in Wantage 
 in the beginning of 1847, and was alone there for 
 a few weeks while the old vicarage (dating, it is 
 said, from the sixteenth century) was being made 
 habitable for his wife and children. Wantage 
 possesses a severe, though healthy, climate, and he 
 suffered considerably from cold and general discomfort 
 during those early days, while he was trying to 
 devise the best means of solving the many problems 
 that lay before him. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 [Jan., 1847.] 
 
 You mustn't grumble at work. I only wish you were at Wan- 
 tage just now and you would see. . . . My cold changed, or 
 rather superadded influenza, bad taste and smell, etc., but on 
 the whole I am better to-day, though far from well. V. came, to 
 my great joy, yesterday at dinner time and we walked about a 
 little. Fancy the difference between a village and a town ; a 
 funeral and baptism on Friday, two funerals yesterday. The 
 number of deaths since Dec. 16 to now is 20; this is more than 
 the average, about one a week. Then the horrid apathy and
 
 1847-1853 SETTING TO WORK 47 
 
 irreverence of the whole concern, the crowd of idlers, etc., made 
 me rather down-hearted. The churchyard is in an abominable 
 state. It ought at once to be remedied, so noisy and unclean, 
 with long rank grass all over it. Bury me at Wareside. Railroad 
 will take me cheap. After two or three false starts I began and 
 wrote a sermon which under all circumstances will do, I hope. I 
 have not seen the churchwarden, but as I spoke pretty plainly I 
 shall ask him if it were too plain. You shall see it. V. thought 
 it would do very well. We began Communion service from altar. 
 It is rather lonely work without a soul but children near one. I 
 placed V. in the stalls. Might we see them filled one day with 
 clergy and choir. Those stalls really are a great point. I did all 
 the morning and shall leave V. to do all the afternoon service. I 
 must go to Oxford this week to be appointed surrogate, which is 
 an office worth 20 or 25 per annum likewise to get a cassock. 
 . . . My room smokes furiously, and I have been obliged to sit 
 with window open all this day. . . . 
 
 This is much the coldest house I ever lived in. My study has 
 never been as high as ' temperate,' and bedroom, in spite of a fire, 
 is so cold that I cannot sleep. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 [Jan. 31, 1847.] 
 
 . . . This day has been spent between visiting and being 
 visited. I drove over to Sparsholt to call on the rural dean. He 
 wrote last night to consult me about one or two points connected 
 with a letter from the Bishop. He, however, was out, but his 
 wife was at home, a very ladylike sensible and kind woman, 
 whom, I think, you will like. . . . Then, as usual, I visited (1) 
 the Ham people, a schoolmaster with a commercial school, a 
 respectable pedagogue who might start A., if need be, i.e. if you 
 forget your Latin. (2) A Roman Catholic family named Hunt, 
 builders in Wantage. I sat and chatted some time. When I 
 went away they gave me their card, and then I thought it right 
 distinctly to tell them that I could not employ them in church 
 work. I explained the circumstances and left them, I believe, 
 quite friendly. (3) An old maid named Aldworth, reminding me 
 
 in a small way of Miss , and seemingly good and kind. 
 
 (4) A 'young ladies" academy, etc., etc. In all I mooted the
 
 48 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 school question, and all seemed to agree with me and to be willing 
 to help. The congregation of yesterday seems to have been the 
 talk of the place, so we must try to strike while the iron is hot. 
 . . . Two more funerals this morning. I do wish we had some 
 parish books. It is slow work copying and copying, as we do 
 now, all the rough notes of our visiting, without the satisfaction of 
 seeing them in some form. V. works like a horse. . . . 
 
 REV. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 HURSLEY, Jan. 28, 1847. 
 
 By this time I imagine you settled at Wantage and deep 
 in your work; wherein, such as I am, I would desire most 
 heartily to bid you God-speed. I know you have enough and 
 too much to do; yet I am about to ask two favours of you, 
 which may give you more or less trouble. They both relate 
 more or less to our dear friend Dr. Pusey. First, do you by 
 any chance know of a person whom you can recommend as a 
 fit and likely successor to Mr. "Ward at St. Saviour's, now made 
 vacant in such a heart-breaking way ? You know, of course, 
 the nature of the place, that it was meant to be a sort of College 
 of Curates, and in a humble way an effort at Anglican asceticism. 
 Now, whoever goes must go with a consciousness that the place 
 is under a sort of cloud, and that whatever sympathies he has 
 with Pusey must be kept under jealous control, else he will 
 never be able to go on with the vicar of Leeds. Indeed, I 
 shall tell Pusey that if the choice lies between an ascetic who 
 will be suspected and an ordinary hard-working curate such as 
 Hook would approve of, I should recommend the latter, under 
 present circumstances. The whole affair is a severe stab to 
 Pusey ; only he is the sort of person whom nothing really hurts. 
 The other matter is a plan which P. and Marriott are 
 starting for a popular commentary on the whole Scriptures, on 
 patristic principles, to supersede Scott and Henry's, and other 
 such ordinary uncatholic performances. Do you think you could 
 find time for a portion of it 1 It might very well serve first in 
 the way of catechetical or pulpit exposition ; and it will, of 
 course, be a long time about, so that you might take your time. 
 
 We have this day begun our work about the Church, but it 
 will be very slow for a long time.
 
 1853 SLOW WORK THE RIGHT WORK 49 
 
 W. J. B. TO KEV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, BERKS, 
 4th S. aft. Ep., 1846 [7]. 
 
 I was not at Wantage when your letter arrived. It journeyed 
 after me to London, and reached me on the very day on which I 
 set out to fix myself here. This is my reason for the delay 
 in answering it. Thank you most deeply for all your kindness. 
 Indeed one wants wishes and more than wishes in such a work 
 as this at Wantage. The whole population is ignorant and 
 apathetic, and some of their ways, after dear Wareside, quite 
 startle me. Yet there seems some sort of good old-fashioned 
 feeling too, and so far I have met with great kindness from 
 all. V. is with me, and this is our first Sunday. There are 
 some very good remains in the church, among other points 
 eighteen beautifully carved stalls in the chancel. Would that 
 I could fill them with clergy and choir. However, I must 
 not run on about Wantage, but answer your two questions. . . . 
 Touching the commentary, I should be very glad to take a part, 
 provided my work were carefully revised by an abler hand than 
 myself, and that I had time. Whatever I do must be in the 
 New Testament, for my knowledge of Hebrew is very imperfect 
 indeed, the very least possible. 
 
 I am so very glad to hear of your church beginning. Slow 
 work is, I suppose, the right work. At least, I am working 
 myself into that belief. I hope that you will be able to receive 
 us in the summer, and that we shall have the chance of seeing it. 
 
 ... I have directed a small compilation of Working Men's 
 Prayers, which I made out as a parting present to Wareside, to 
 be sent to you. 
 
 REV. C. DYSON TO W. J. B. 
 
 DOGMERSFIELD RECTORY, 
 
 HARTFORD BRIDGE, May 12, 1847. 
 
 You will see I have worked myself up to answer your note 
 with my own hand, which take as a proof that I set some 
 value on your communication. Had you sent your question 
 about teaching or suppressing the Church Catechism before you 
 had the Bishop's reply, I should have said decidedly, Do not 
 
 D
 
 50 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 give up the Catechism. If yours is to be a Church school that 
 is one of the distinctive marks of it. Nor do I think you 
 would find much (if any) difficulty with Dissenting parents of 
 children who come to the school. In all the parishes I have 
 been charged with I do not remember any objection being 
 made by Dissenters to teaching their children the Catechism, 
 except by your old acquaintance, John Burrows, the blacksmith 
 here; and he gave way immediately. But since you asked the 
 Bishop's advice and received his answer, your question is 
 entangled with more difficulty. Yet after considering his 
 answers, which seem at first to advise the suppression of the 
 Church Catechism quoad Dissenters' children, as well as the 
 respect and deference due to him after consulting him, I think I 
 see a way by which you may follow your own convictions with- 
 out offence. The first answer seems to me to be so qualified, 
 and limited by the two following (for if "the Dissenters have 
 nothing to do with the school"; and "the tone and manage- 
 ment of the school are to be essentially Church," what need to 
 make any break in the school teaching for a supposed possible 
 objection on their part?) that you may reasonably take the 
 Bishop's advice as permissive and not injunctive ; e.g. he sanctions 
 your conceding the point if advanced by the Dissenters, and the 
 school cannot be accomplished without it; but does not recom- 
 mend the concession without such necessity. I should suppose, 
 indeed, that he would be really glad if you could go on with the 
 school without it. That at least is the way in which you may 
 quite respectfully take his advice. . . . 
 
 The Ven. Alfred Pott, Archdeacon of Berks, gives 
 his recollections of William Butler's work in the 
 Diocese of Oxford, which in 1847 had recently 
 come under the vigorous rule of Bishop Samuel 
 "Wilberforce. 
 
 I am asked to put on paper some of my recollections of the 
 work of Dean Butler in the Diocese of Oxford, with which we 
 were both associated for so many years. From the time that 
 he came to Wantage until the time of his leaving it we were 
 fellow-workers in almost every important Diocesan movement.
 
 1853 ARCHDEACON POTT'S RECOLLECTIONS 51 
 
 My own intimacy with Bishop Wilberforce dated from the period 
 of my ordination as priest at Christmas, 1846, and Butler took 
 the vicarage of Wantage, I think, in January, 1847. I well 
 remember his coming to Cuddesdon to consult the Bishop as to 
 his accepting the vicarage. I was a young curate, and he not 
 many years my senior. Of his parochial work it is not for me 
 to speak. Others more closely connected with him in that 
 work will speak of the wonderful way in which his energy and 
 devotion regenerated the dormant spiritual life of an insignificant 
 Berkshire town, and raised it to the position which it now holds. 
 I remember one sentence in a letter of Bishop Wilberforce, where 
 he says, " Butler's work is amazing." No one knew better than 
 that great Bishop how to pick his men, and to make them all 
 work under him for the good of his Diocese. It will be remem- 
 bered how in those years that Diocese needed entire new organiza- 
 tion as much as did the parish of Wantage. Consisting, as it had 
 done from the days of Henry the Eighth, of the one county of 
 Oxford, and even that curtailed by large peculiars, excepted from 
 the Bishop's jurisdiction, the See had been occupied by a 
 succession of prelates, holding with the bishopric other dignities, 
 ecclesiastical or academical, in commendam, to make up the 
 scanty endowments of the See. Then, among the many changes 
 of our own day, the county of Berks had been taken from the 
 See of Salisbury, in the later years of Bishop Bagot, and added 
 to Oxford. And similarly the county of Buckingham was taken 
 from Lincoln and thrown into Oxford on the accession of Bishop 
 Wilberforce. It needed the genius of a statesman to consolidate 
 these heterogeneous elements into one organic whole still more 
 to make the reality of Episcopal influence felt through every 
 part of so large an area. The Bishop was supported by a noble 
 body of officers. His Rural Deans especially gathered round him 
 (to use a likeness suggested by one of them) like Napoleon's 
 marshals round the Emperor. Nearly all of that company have 
 passed away. While they continued, Butler, who became one 
 of the body soon after he came into the Diocese, held a very 
 prominent place. Younger in years than many of his fellows, 
 and in some cases, it must be allowed, looked upon with a slight 
 measure of suspicion, his enthusiasm and energy, and, above all, 
 his strong common-sense, soon won for him a recognised position. 
 The Bishop himself was keenly alive to his value. Butler was
 
 5.2 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 never very tolerant of carelessness or neglect of duty in those 
 around him, and this in itself did sometimes provoke impatient 
 discontent on the part of those whose slothfulness was rebuked 
 by his activity. I remember one of his neighbours complaining 
 to the Bishop. " Mr. Butler, my Lord, seems to have acquired 
 an undue hold upon us. Every one is growing to look upon him 
 as the one authority in the Deanery." " Indeed," replied the 
 Bishop, " I am truly glad to hear it ; that is exactly as I should 
 wish it to be." 
 
 Among the many instrumentalities for stirring up the life of the 
 Diocese, Bishop Wilberforce's "missions" occupied a prominent 
 place. The missions of that period were altogether different in 
 their organization from the movements known by that name now. 
 They were held usually in the Lent Ember season. The Bishop 
 would gather round him a body of picked clergy of various 
 shades of religious opinion, some from his own Diocese, some 
 from a distance, but all concentrated in some one important 
 centre. From that centre they radiated to every neighbouring 
 village ready to receive them, the Bishop himself usually remaining 
 at the centre, himself celebrating Communion daily and preaching 
 several times during the week, as a rule opening the mission with 
 a sermon on the first Sunday of the Ember week, and closing 
 it with an evening sermon on the last Sunday. On this last 
 Sunday the ordination was held at the central church, thus 
 bringing the realities of the apostolic communion before a number 
 who had very probably never seen an ordination in their lives, 
 and were ignorant for the most part of what an ordination 
 was. The first, I think, of these missions was at Wantage. 
 I well remember the little old dilapidated vicarage at the west 
 end of the church where the lime trees now grow, where 
 evening after evening the Bishop gathered his mission clergy 
 and received from them reports of their day's work. Almost 
 all the important towns of the Diocese enjoyed these helps 
 afterwards, and there were few in which the vicar of Wantage 
 did not take his part. 
 
 Another most important organization, which has lasted down 
 to our time, was the formation of the three Diocesan societies 
 Education, Church-building, Spiritual Aid ; those who know some- 
 thing of the great educational establishments which have sprung 
 up in Wantage itself, under the vicar's fostering care, will readily
 
 1853 EDUCATIONAL EFFORTS 53 
 
 believe that he was a very important factor in the working of 
 every educational effort for the whole Diocese. At the quarterly 
 meetings in Oxford, at the gatherings of inspectors at Cuddesdon, 
 in the formation of such institutions as our Training College at 
 Culham, and in the management of that College, up to the time 
 of his leaving the Diocese, he was ever an active and a wise 
 counsellor. In the midst of all his hard work at Wantage he 
 held for many years the office of Bishop's Inspector for the 
 Deanery. In his examinations of schools he was impatient 
 of slovenliness and inaccuracy, and did sometimes provoke a 
 measure of resentment on the part of those who were themselves 
 slovenly or inaccurate. But any one who had been with him 
 in his own schools knew how little he tolerated such defects among 
 his own teachers or children. It has been well said, if he was 
 severe upon others, he was most severe of all upon himself. 
 
 It will be remembered that in looking back upon his early 
 days in our Diocese, we are recalling a period when the whole 
 of the present elementary educational system was in its infancy. 
 "\Ve had to watch a development which, little by little, has grown 
 into an organisation which we cannot now contemplate without 
 some anxiety. But here too his strong good sense was ready 
 to discriminate between the good and the evil inherent in the 
 state system of education. He, and I myself, lived through a 
 period, at the beginning of which the Department came to us, 
 asking us to receive almost as a matter of favour to themselves, 
 their money grants and their inspection, into a period when that 
 inspection has become compulsory and their money grants 
 indispensable. From the first he readily accepted the good 
 part of the system, and did what lay in him to eliminate 
 the bad. While you make the faith of the Church the ground- 
 work of all your teaching, not only of what is called the religious 
 element, while you do this, he would say, do not reject any 
 help offered tending to make any part of your teaching more 
 perfect. I recollect in those early days one of his own teachers 
 doubting whether she ought to have anything to do with 
 Government help, or Government certificates and examinations, 
 as things savouring of the world and not of the Church. " Use 
 all such helps," said the vicar; "reject none of them. If the 
 great Cham of Tartary were to open an examination I would 
 go in for it if it would in any way help on my school in any
 
 54 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 branch of knowledge." But an account of the vicar's work 
 in Wantage itself will be more fully given by another hand. 
 
 One more recollection. In the year 1853 Bishop Wilberforce 
 proposed to me the building of a Theological College at 
 Cuddesdon. The first person of whom I thought as a counsellor 
 in the matter was the vicar of Wantage, and I at once went 
 thither to talk over the matter with him. It was by no means 
 the easy matter which it may now seem to carry out such a 
 scheme, especially within eight miles of Oxford. There were 
 many adversaries, even among those who were usually loyal 
 supporters of the Bishop. It is to the enthusiastic and steady 
 support of Butler, and the strong faith of the Bishop himself 
 and some few staunch friends in the necessity for such institutions, 
 that Cuddesdon owed its beginnings. And those who can call 
 to mind those days under myself, Canon Liddon, and the Bishop 
 of Lincoln, will bear witness to the help given to all of us by 
 the same generous friend in times of trouble and rebuke and 
 blasphemy. 
 
 It would be easy, associated as I was for so many years wilh 
 Butler, to speak of other parts of his labours ("amazing," 
 as Bishop Wilberforce called them), but it is of his Diocesan 
 work that I have been asked to recall some memories. There 
 are few (if any) left besides myself who lived through the 
 whole period of his life in the Oxford Diocese ; of Wantage, the 
 Sisterhood, Worcester, Lincoln, others will doubtless be asked 
 to tell. Some memories are, after all, short-lived, but the work 
 itself survives, and the Diocese is still reaping the harvest which 
 was sown by the vicar of Wantage and Bishop Wilberforce. 
 
 The parish of which William Butler had now 
 beQome vicar was one that enjoyed an evil reputation. 
 " Black Wantage," as it was called, was one of those 
 half-urban, half-rural parishes which are in many 
 respects most difficult to manage, combining neither 
 the advantages of town or country. As the birthplace 
 of King Alfred and Bishop Butler it is not without 
 historical associations, but its local importance con- 
 sisted solely in being the corn market of the farmers
 
 1853 'BLACK WANTAGE 55 
 
 in the Vale of White Horse. There were no resident 
 gentry. Rope-making had been the staple industry, 
 but it was in its decline, and an iron foundry was 
 taking its place. There was a stately cruciform 
 church, but the internal arrangements were far from 
 being decent or in order, although the general effect 
 was imposing " a church that would awe people 
 into devotion," as was said by one of the great 
 architects of the day. The " Latin school" and a 
 dame school occupied the churchyard, the latter 
 attended by only thirty-six children out of a popula- 
 tion of 3282. The vicarage, an ancient, thatched, 
 dilapidated building, stood at the west end of the 
 church. A graphic picture of Wantage is drawn in 
 the Bristol Times, under date December 1847, only 
 a few months after the new vicar's arrival, which 
 shows how he had already begun to make his mark 
 on the place. 
 
 Wantage, says the anonymous writer, though it has two inns, 
 three tailors and drapers, one policeman, a brace of watchmen, 
 and gas lamps, is little better than streets of farm-houses con- 
 fronting each other, with flocks and herds feeding out in the 
 rear. . . . While strolling about on Saturday evening I found 
 the church door open, and entered. There were some men at 
 work repairing and restoring the chancel. . . . The new clergy- 
 man is of the new school zealous, anxious, ever in his work. 
 He is evidently one of the race of clergymen who have of late 
 years sprung up to replace the old high-and-dry denomination, 
 and compete in energy and zeal with the evangelical order one 
 of a class who emerged from their Colleges at Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge with ideas already formed of pastoral duty, with plans 
 prepared and purposes fixed to carry them out with a kind of 
 Christian chivalry. If some of them have lacked discretion, 
 none of them have been deficient in devotedness, and many have
 
 56 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 a wakened a new spirit in the parishes over which they were 
 placed, filling churches that before, morning and evening, 
 boasted but a cheerless few, and crowding schools that before were 
 neglected and in decay. This, I learnt, had been the case here. 
 The present incumbent came after a rector [sic] with whom he 
 stood strongly contrasted. Wantage has been one of those places 
 which have commonly been considered an appanage to some 
 cathedral stall, or a fat gift for some favoured pluralist, who 
 thought it no sin, as Lord Eldon said, " to shear the sheep he did 
 not feed." The Dean of St. George's Chapel, at Windsor, was 
 the last of the favoured few to whom Wantage fell. Twice a year 
 he arrived with a carpet bag at the Bear Inn, received his tithes, 
 and returned, without leaving either his carpet bag or his bless- 
 ing behind him. After such a pastor, any ordinary conscientious 
 clergyman must have been a change for the better; and the 
 present being more than commonly painstaking, the consequences 
 of increased zeal began to be gradually seen in increased con- 
 gregations ; pew doors, the latches of which had rusted in their 
 staples, were gradually opened; seats, from which the moths had 
 not been disturbed for years, began to fill; the dry-rot that 
 extended from pews to pulpit, and pulpit to pews, was stayed; 
 and on the Sunday I was there the edifice was completely filled 
 with smock-frocks and broadcloth. I liked the sermon, because I 
 thought it an original one; none of those firstly, secondly, and 
 thirdly compilations one hears too often, in nine cases out of ten, 
 and which all appear to be cut out of the same pattern. 
 
 The vicar began at once to cope with the many 
 difficulties that faced him in his new parish. One 
 was in the shape of the small hamlet of Charlton, 
 about a mile from the parish church, and inhabited 
 only by two farmers and their labourers, with the few 
 tradesmen who supplied their simple wants. The little 
 place had been utterly neglected by Dissent as well 
 as by the Church but the awakening of spiritual life 
 in Wantage roused the nonconformists to action, and 
 it seemed probable that a meeting house would be
 
 1853 THE FIRST CONFIRMATION 57 
 
 built in the village which would certainly have been 
 thenceforward lost to the Church. The vicar, how- 
 ever, forestalled them. He secured a suitable site, 
 applied to his friend Mr. Butterfield for plans for a 
 simple brick church to be built at a cost of 200, 
 and on 27th April, 1848, the first stone was laid 
 by his mother. The church was dedicated to the 
 Holy Trinity, and was opened in August of the same 
 year. A school soon followed. The plan for Charlton 
 church, together with other parochial matters, is 
 mentioned in a letter to Bishop Wilberforce. 
 
 W. J. B. TO BISHOP OF OXFORD. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, November 18, 1847. 
 
 MY LORD, The result of our confirmation has been most satis- 
 factory, so far, at least, as one can judge, both as regards the 
 confirmed and the rest of the congregation present. Several 
 of the latter said that it was to them like being confirmed over 
 again themselves. One of our lawyers told me that he had 
 forgotten all about his own confirmation, but this he never 
 should forget as long as he lived. About 70 of the confirmed 
 have become communicants, and on Oct. 31, when I administered 
 the Sacrament, 180 were present. This seems to give an opening 
 for a better state of things, and to justify a weekly Communion, 
 which I for one, and the rest of our cleric party, most earnestly 
 desire. On the Sunday which I mentioned we were in 
 church till near half-past two, which alone seems to make 
 a change of some kind needful. I should propose a weekly 
 Communion at some early hour, as eight o'clock, except on the 
 first Sunday in each month, when I would keep to the former 
 time, viz. after the morning service. Will you kindly write me 
 a word in reply to this ? 
 
 Butterfield has given me drawings for a church, or rather a 
 piece of a church, with room for about 90 people, which can 
 be built for 120, and which will have an ecclesiastical character.
 
 58 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 I think also that I can get a morsel of land off a little green 
 on which to build it. The building is contrived so as to receive 
 more wall, a chancel, tower, and good windows whenever money 
 comes to pay for them. 
 
 I shall have to trouble your Lordship again with the result 
 of the deliberations of the School Committee. I thought we 
 might resolve on some memorial to the Government, requesting 
 assistance, but declining it under the present arrangements 
 on account, firstly, of the indefiniteness of the words spiritual 
 and secular as used of a school, and, secondly, of the advantage 
 of an arbiter in all cases, than whom none can be so fitting for 
 the members of the Church as their Bishop, and expressing also, 
 if it can be done without offence, the danger which we see of 
 the management passing from Church hands under the clauses 
 of the Privy Council. 
 
 BISHOP OF OXFORD TO W. J. B. 
 
 CUDDESDON PALACE, Nov. 20. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, I have no objection to your proposal of a 
 monthly Communion at the morning service, and an early 
 Communion on the other Sundays; 1 but shall thank God if I 
 hear from you that the attendance justifies fully the attempt. It 
 is my own practice in my chapel here. 
 
 Your temporary church plan seems a very good one; and 
 the deliberations of your School Committee appear to me to 
 be wise, saving only that I think you should first ask assistance 
 simply ; then, if the objectionable management clauses come, 
 object. Most likely they will yield ; if not, present a memorial 
 to Government, and the National Society on the final refusal ; 
 and perhaps a petition to Parliament. Lord John seems 
 determined to break by simple insults his truce with the Church. 
 
 1 In the "Parish Journal" for May 7, 1848, appears this entry : 
 " Early Communion (13). I am not sure whether this will answer 
 or do harm, upsetting the regular course which was so prosperous 
 by the blessing of God. I trust that as we undertook this for the 
 benefit of some of our parishioners who certainly had a right to claim 
 it, that He will rule it for the best. It is a very serious step, more 
 serious than perhaps at first sight appears. It seems like the beginning 
 of a great work."
 
 1853 ST. MICHAEL'S ON THE DOWNS 59 
 
 The next letters show how readily he accepted new 
 responsibilities rather than forego a principle or miss 
 an opportunity. The Rev. T. Archer Houblon had 
 offered 1000 to build a chapel for the workhouse, 
 on condition of its being consecrated. After much 
 opposition this was effected, and St. Michael's on the 
 Downs, designed by Mr. Butterfield, became a 
 permanent chapel of ease to Wantage. 
 
 REV. T. A. HOUBLON TO W. J. B. 
 
 August 11 [1848]. 
 
 I trust you will excuse my troubling you with this note on the 
 subject of a chapel we are desirous of building for the benefit of 
 the poor in the Wantage workhouse, and which is very much 
 needed. But the Bishop will not consent to consecrate without 
 we secure the permanency of the performance of the duty in it, 
 and this we can only do by making it a chapel of ease to Wantage, 
 though there is little doubt but that the Board of Guardians will 
 continue their present salary to a chaplain. We have already 
 obtained the consent of the Dean and Chapter to this, but do not 
 like to take any steps in the good work till we have yours. 
 Should you really have no objection to our placing the chapel on 
 this footing, would you let me know at your earliest convenience, 
 as, though we cannot commence the building this year, we might 
 [be] collecting and preparing the materials, and fixing on the plan, 
 so as to be ready to commence early in the Spring. 
 
 PEASEMORE, NEWBURY, BERKS. 
 
 REV. T. A. HOUBLON TO W. J. B. 
 
 [Undated.] 
 
 seemed determined on building a room, to be licensed as a 
 
 chapel, by public subscriptions, wanting me to head them with 
 one of a hundred pounds. I am, however, resolved to abide by 
 the original agreement, and not to give anything unless for a 
 consecrated building.
 
 60 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 He was then and always in close touch with the 
 Bishop whom he consulted at every important point 
 in his work. The Bishop from the first perceived 
 that in William Butler he had a man of no common 
 gifts ; and he strengthened his hands by every means 
 in his power. Extracts from Bishop Wilberforce's 
 letters will illustrate this. 
 
 BISHOP OF OXFORD TO W. J. B. 
 
 CUDDESDON PALACE, Feb. 10, 1848. 
 
 It has occurred to me that it might aid your work if I could 
 come and ordain your deacon at Wantage on the Ember Sunday. 
 I cannot absolutely promise this, but tell me whether you would 
 like it. 
 
 61 EATON PLACE, March 10 [1848]. 
 
 I approve entirely of your proposed missionary scheme except 
 that I think collecting only through the offertory will not 
 answer. I think the habit of subscribing good, and our people 
 will not be ready to give besides their offertory offering to this at 
 the offertory. Either, therefore, your common alms or these will 
 suffer. I have no objection to your receiving any extra gifts 
 as you propose; but I do not think that you will effect your 
 purpose if you limit your gifts to that. 
 
 The next letter alludes to the arrangements for the 
 ordination to be held in Wantage church, and to 
 difficulties connected with the National schools. 
 
 BISHOP OF OXFORD TO W. J. B. 
 
 5 WHITEHALL PLACE, March 4 [1848]. 
 
 I do not think it will be well to alter the service. A sermon is 
 ordered and the litany ; the morning prayer thus shortened is not 
 long. 
 
 I think, especially after last night's debate, you had better get 
 your committee to agree to a short letter (as he has said, "propose 
 your arrangements," etc.) to this effect. Propose any clause, A,
 
 1853 AN ORDINATION AT WANTAGE 61 
 
 B, C, D, as you please, changing as little as possible, and merely 
 adding, "and that the Bishop of the Diocese be the visitor of the 
 said school." 
 
 Of course, I cannot but be glad to see any friends you may like 
 to invite ; specially such an one as Keble. 
 
 I will settle with the Archdeacon about a sermon. I shall be 
 glad if well to preach once at least myself. 
 
 Do not let the Union Chapel sleep. C. Buller said to me, " I 
 do not know what you want done, but / will do it." It is a pity to 
 lose such an humour. . . . 
 
 The ordination held at Wantage, March 1848, is 
 thus described in the Life of Bishop Wilberforce, 
 vol. ii., p. 8 (1881). 
 
 You ask about Wantage ; it was quite a pleasant visit. I got 
 there about 4 P.M. We had a large gathering of neighbours, 
 clergy. Tea and then to a meeting of Church of England mis- 
 sions. Next morning service at ten. It is a noble red [sicl old] 
 cruciform church, and the chancel all nicely restored by the 
 present vicar. It was crowded by a most attentive people. I 
 preached to them on " The sufficiency of God," and I never saw a 
 congregation more hushed into earnest and devout attention. 
 All through the ordination there was the deepest attention. I 
 administered the Holy Communion to 160, amongst them a large 
 number of young people whom I confirmed here last year. We 
 went home to dinner at three a party of clergy, some from 
 Oxford, some from the neighbourhood. At four we went to after- 
 noon service, and Archdeacon Clerke preached. At seven we 
 went to an evening litany and sermon, and I preached to them. 
 We had some talk in the evening, an eight o'clock prayers next 
 morning, and after breakfast I came away. Butler is working his 
 parish with admirable diligence and, at present, success. He 
 seems to me more to combine the good of the Evangelical party 
 with the devotion of the High Church than almost any young 
 man I know. His only danger is on the latter side. 
 
 Another work undertaken at this time was the 
 closing of the churchyard, which was overcrowded,
 
 62 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 and in the heart of the town. With the consent 
 of the Dean and Chapter of Windsor half an acre 
 of glebe was allotted for a cemetery, on which a 
 chapel was built. A new vicarage also had become 
 a necessity. The old dilapidated structure was 
 taken down, traces of Elizabethan building being 
 found in the timbers of the roof ; and a new 
 vicarage, designed by Mr. Gr. E. Street, was built 
 on the north-west side of the church. The same 
 year saw the building of a girls' school, of which 
 Mr. Woodyer was the architect. This was opened 
 on the 29th July, 1850. 
 
 The two letters which follow describe the opening 
 of St. Augustine's Missionary College at Canterbury, 
 a great event in the Church history of the time. 
 The rest of the correspondence speaks for itself. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 [July 4, 1848.] 
 
 I have been at work this morning, positive external work ever 
 since half-past six, and now it is nine. This, therefore, will be 
 two pennyworth for you, for I am anxious, if possible, to give 
 you some idea of the doings of the last few days. In the first 
 place then, on Wednesday night at eight o'clock, V. and I left 
 Faringdon Road; at Slough got in three men, apparently Eton 
 masters, bound on the same errand as ourselves. We did not 
 however socialise, though one turned out next day to be Abraham 
 or Abram, to whom I was introduced by friendly Woodard. 
 Then I went to Clifton Place, and thence after some consideration 
 to the Adelaide Hotel, London Bridge, where I slept for exactly 
 three hours, rising at four. I was rejoiced, by the way, to find 
 that I can wake without being called. I slept just over the short 
 passage to old London Bridge, near a great church clock where a 
 church was once, and a church still standing of the respectable
 
 1853 ON THE WAY TO CANTERBURY 63 
 
 C. Wren date. Under the same roof were Vincent, Mozley, Wood- 
 ard, and lots more. I was off first in the morning with W., and 
 arriving at station just at five, found it thronged with acquaint- 
 ances and friends, new and old, some cassockt 1 and capt as 
 Chamberlain and Patterson, some great-coated and plaided as 
 myself and Marriott, all with little bags in their hands containing 
 their ' robes.' Hope looking about through his spectacles, Lady 
 Mildred and a select few females all in high spirits, Bishops like 
 blackbirds, Archbishop with suite of rosy low church chaplains 
 and purple flunkies, S. Oxon in full and fat fig, H. Wilber- 
 force, Trench (by the way it is very curious how the Bishop and 
 he have communicated to each other expression of voice, look, 
 and language), with crowds more of all kinds. I was in a car- 
 riage with Henry Wilberforce, Patterson, C. Marriott, and 
 Crawley of Littlemore, and the conversation was very agreeable. 
 I taxed H. W. with his familiarity with K. Shuttleworth. He 
 looked a little, I thought, ashamed, but got off somehow. There 
 was something on the line, the removal of which caused delay, 
 and we did not go over fast. Arrived in Canterbury, more faces 
 presented themselves, for we had stopped at Ashford and Tun- 
 bridge to take men in. Masters, Balston, Tritton, J. M. Heath, 
 Flint, etc. It was raining hard, and we had a somewhat muddy 
 run to the College, a mile and a half distant. I was very near 
 missing the consecration, for fancying that all the men in the 
 train were invited thereto, I stayed chatting with them at the 
 station. Luckily I lighted on some gent in a fly, who conveyed 
 me part of the way ; and at last I found myself in the College 
 Hall, this, too, filled with men Webb, Scott, Vaughan, Blakesley, 
 Mr. Keble, Geo. Williams, Thompson of Trinity, Lord Powis, 
 Mr. Puller, Monro, D. Coleridge, Pollen, etc. I was too much 
 excited to see much. Things just lay on the retina of my eyes 
 without making an impression, just as words will fall on the ear 
 sometimes and you cannot bring the mind to realise them. I 
 heard people talking, how this was the old oak roof preserved, 
 and I could feel the general effect, but this was all. After a long 
 delay we were summoned by name, Mr. Keble to my intense joy 
 first of all, before Deans, Archdeacons, Schoolmasters, 'Apostles,' 
 
 1 This form of the past tense was much used by Cambridge men of 
 that date, under the influence of the Hares.
 
 64 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 Poets, Lords temporal, Ecclesiologists, or College tutors (there 
 were no Heads of houses !). Then all in turn. With eleven others I 
 was placed in the little Sacrarium facing the Archbishop's Throne. 
 All the stalls were filled by men and the Antechapel by Lady 
 Mildred Hope and her party. Then came up Archbishop and six 
 or seven Bishops, Bishop of Brechin among them, the Archbishop 
 and Gloucester alone remaining in the Sacrarium ; and consecra- 
 tion service began by the procession up and down the chapel of 
 the Archbishop, Bishops, and officiating clergymen. The service 
 was very poor, and in some respects jarring. . . . However, I 
 don't want to talk of this, but merely to give you my entire feel- 
 ings. Then it was very slow to have no chanting, no organ, and 
 to see all the black gowns on so joyous an occasion. One or two 
 other things put me out a little, as you know tightly strung 
 feelings are very apt to be easily jarred. The collection was 
 noble, 3000 ; 2000 sent by one unknown contributor, 500 by 
 another. Service concluded at a quarter to eleven, and then I 
 
 went to and got a very minute portion of food, though in 
 
 a fainting state. . . . After a time H. W. and Mary "VV. came in, 
 and Mrs. Manning and Miss Byles afterwards, so that we went 
 forth a large party to the Cathedral. By this time the close was 
 teeming with people, and when the doors of the Cathedral opened 
 a very disgraceful rush and scramble took place, some literally 
 racing up the nave to get seats in the choir. There was a great 
 squeeze at the entrance and up the steps of the choir. (Do you 
 understand that the choir screen of Canterbury is raised on a 
 noble flight of steps 1 ) Those present in the morning had 
 reserved seats, so that I was fairly placed in the stalls. The choir 
 presented a most striking appearance, from numbers and variety 
 of costume ; but there was no separation of clergy and laity, all 
 were in a dense mass mingled together. Women in the Stalls, 
 laity in the Sacrarium, etc. There was a fine sound of many 
 voices in the Psalms, etc.; and the anthem was a favourite of 
 mine, Handel's " How beautiful are the feet," etc. . . . 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, July 5, 1848, 
 
 I think I left off at the Cathedral after the rush. It was a very 
 fine sight, only one wished to have the Archbishop on the steps 
 outside the choir, haranguing the multitude in the nave. The 
 sermon was slow but harmless ; I could catch nothing of it but a
 
 1853 CANTERBURY 65 
 
 few texts here and there, and certain technicalities of expression. 
 Still, he uttered the word Church several times, and the text told 
 its own tale "Make known by the Church." The singing 
 was good and hearty from the mass of voice. But the whole 
 tone of the Cathedral is very unsatisfactory, and confirms my 
 Chartist views. I slept out most of the sermon, and I believe 
 many others were nodding also. A collection, not in the 
 offertory, but by gents at the door, ludicrous enough it seemed 
 to see men with plates at the Cathedral door. E. Hawkins 
 was one, and I think Fagan, and others. . . . Then came 
 luncheon in the Cloisters and Museum of the College, pre- 
 ceded by wandering about the rooms. Everyone was there. 
 Bishop of Oxford, with Trench on one and Allies on the other 
 arm, Henry and Mary Wilberforce, Cyril Page, Pollen and sister, 
 Patterson and ditto, Puller, with whom I had some talk, old 
 Eandolph, the Dean of Hereford, with whom I fraternized. 
 Everyone save Hope and Butterfield, neither of whom I saw. 
 The clergy were in various costumes, some with cassocks, some 
 without. Women folk plainly drest as became them. I made an 
 attempt, but failed, to catch the four o'clock train, but I didn't 
 care, for I thereby caught afternoon service in Cathedral. . . . 
 No preachment in the afternoon, which was slow. One longed 
 for a few good earnest words spoken from the heart. But they 
 didn't come. After service, V., B., sisters and I went to see St. 
 Martin's, a most interesting relic as you know, lately restored in 
 good style, admirably placed on a rising knoll. By this time we 
 had to run for it to catch the half-past-seven train, which how- 
 ever we did catch, and I found myself in a coupe with 
 Humphry, Lord Nelson, and J. Mozley. This gave a pleasant 
 journey to London where we arrived at eleven. Even then I 
 saw one more, even Mrs. Keble in her cab, and had a kind 
 greeting from her. . . . The streets of Canterbury won't forget 
 the gathering in a hurry. They say that 1000 clergy were 
 present. I should have said that about 500 was nearer the 
 truth, but it is difficult to be accurate. I heard one rough- 
 looking fellow say to another, " I wonder what all these parsons 
 costs to keep." This was an obvious though not very kind 
 remark. But it made me ponder a little, not exactly how much 
 they cost to keep, but a few other points connected with it.
 
 66 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 W. J. B. TO VEN. ARCHDEACON MANNING. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, August 29, 1848. 
 
 MY DEAR ARCHDEACON, I too have been purposing to write 
 to you to express, or try to express, the deep thankfulness with 
 which I look back on your short abode with us, and the support 
 which your words gave to opinions (or I should rather say a 
 belief), which have long been growing up in my mind. 
 
 It has seemed to me that our Church, having weathered the 
 difficulties attending the statement of the true Faith in regard to 
 the two great means of Grace, has been enjoying a kind of 
 ovation, and if I may say so, running riot in the glorious views 
 which open themselves as consequences. So then that we have 
 been neglecting, as a bod}% the sterner and more practical, and 
 that we (of course especially the clergy) are greatly needing a 
 higher standard of religious aiming, deeper spirituality, stricter 
 ocnc?7cris, a life more regulated by definite calculation of the worth 
 of acts. Really, often I think that in this the " High Church " 
 school is left behind by the "Evangelical." The evangelical 
 party seem more saturated with spirituality. In order then to 
 give this higher tone we are mercifully led on to that which will 
 put the Church as much before itself in practice as the true 
 doctrine of the sacraments, etc., has advanced her in the faith, 
 viz. confession and absolution. We seem to be gradually drifting 
 on to this, and so, as the channel of perfection, Satan has guarded 
 this with especial care. 
 
 I feel so very deeply the peculiar nature of the difficulties 
 which beset this subject, and yet on the other hand, the absolute 
 necessity of bringing it forward, that I am more perplexed than 
 I can say; I am terrified when urging my parishioners to more 
 frequent communion and the like without adding this as a pre- 
 liminary, and yet I feel very fearful lest by clumsiness, lack of 
 otKovofua, misuse of words, or what in effect is the same, the 
 use of words, in themselves right enough, but misunderstood and 
 so conveying a false impression, I should be the means of 
 scandal. Of one thing I seem certain, that it cannot properly be 
 urged but by a confessing clergy, and here I think we shall find 
 no small difficulty. The pain and trouble will make men recoil 
 from this in practice, who will gladly admit the theory as well 
 as other Church views. . . .
 
 1853 CORRESPONDENCE, 1848 67 
 
 How one longs that the halo of romance, so to say, were removed 
 from confession, and it became a regular common-place part of 
 Christian life. This would save what now causes so much need- 
 less pain, that, I mean, connected with self-consciousness. 
 
 This difficulty has occurred to me, and I should be glad to have 
 it solved. Is it not somewhat unnatural, if not wrong, that any 
 one, even a confessor, should know more of a married woman 
 than her husband knows, and might not the neglect of this fact 
 have been in some measure the cause of the laxity which has 
 obtained abroad in the matter of marriage 1 
 
 I assure you, with many thanks for your great kindness in 
 thinking about me, that I do take care of my health, and (at least 
 since Lent) I have generally made out about six hours of sleep. 
 And I have lately been enjoying a most reposeful ten days of 
 reading and writing at Glympton, 1 than which never was schemed 
 a more fitting hospital for decayed parsons. . . . Charlton 
 Chapel is working well. 
 
 REV. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 H. V., August 3, 1848. 
 
 At last Harrison has sent the sketch of the font which he 
 proposes, and I forward it for your consideration. To our 
 idiotical eyes it looks as if it would do very well. Will you 
 kindly return it to him with any remarks upon itself or the 
 manner in which you would wish it wrought, by whom, in what 
 material, etc., as soon as convenient to 11 Chancery Lane ? 
 [Now, before I say the next thing, I put you upon your 
 honour if the subject were a fit one, as perhaps it is, I would 
 put you upon something more sacred not to go one farthing 
 beyond what you had before intended to apply to this purpose ; 
 and I say the same to kind Mr. Freeman, to whom I ought 
 rather to give something costly for the use he has been of 
 
 to . Now if you promise me this in your heart, you 
 
 may read on ; if not, it will be like breaking one's seal.] The 
 cost will be about thirty pounds. I really grudge taking it 
 from Wantage, especially as I see no immediate prospect of 
 being able to make an offering there. But you were so kindly 
 
 1 His father-in-law's country house.
 
 68 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 earnest I could not but thankfully say yes, only it is very 
 possible that things may have arisen since which might draw 
 your gift, if it were free, elsewhere ; and, in one word, I trust 
 you will consider it free. 
 
 We hope to be ready by St. Matthew's Day, but are as 
 yet scarcely able to propose it to the Bishop. Pray come if 
 you can, and bring Mrs. Butler. I daresay you will have to 
 put up with some strange extempore accommodations, but 
 that you will not mind. We mean to invite as few as we can 
 from a distance, that our own people may have room. But it 
 will be a loss not to have our especial benefactors, and there 
 will be plenty of room for them. 
 
 I feel as I write that it ought to make one very thoughtful 
 having to do with such a work. One may hope that one's 
 friends are thoughtful for one. . . . 
 
 Judge Coleridge tells me of a long talk which he has had 
 with your Bishop about this bill for people marrying two 
 sisters. It seems to me very shocking, and that his taking 
 part in it, which he seems inclined to do, will be especially 
 sad and scandalous. I mention it in case you should be able 
 and willing to influence him in any way. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 GLYMPTON PARK, WOODSTOCK, 
 August 21, 1848. 
 
 I ought long ago to have answered your very kind letter, 
 especially as I do trust to be able to be with you on St. 
 Matthew's Day. We admired Mr. Harrison's design very much, 
 and returned [it] to him immediately, that it might be taken in 
 hand. It is not worth while now to explain to you certain 
 points connected with the donorship of it, but perhaps I ought 
 to say this (and I hope you will not object to the change), 
 that having sounded - , and finding that he did not, as I 
 expected, spring to meet me, from poverty not will consenting, 
 I made another arrangement, viz. to offer it from the Wantage 
 clerics, male and female. ... I thought of a few words 
 underneath the plinth or shaft (i.e. on the side of the font 
 which touches the ground), and consequently entirely hidden,
 
 i853 CORRESPONDENCE, 1848 69 
 
 to express that the font was a gift from the Priests, Deacon, 
 and Eeligious of Wantage to the Hursley church, just for the 
 purpose of fixing the feeling. But I do not care at all about 
 this, if, as is very probable, you may think it objectionable. I 
 thought of this 
 
 * 
 Ecclesiffi Parochial! 
 
 S 
 
 In agro Hursliensi? 
 
 Hunc Fontem, Lavacrum Regeneratiouia 
 
 In honorem D.N. J.C. 
 
 Gratis animis 
 
 D. D. D. 
 
 Presbyteri, Diaconus, Lectores? Sorores? 
 
 Ecclesise S.S. Petri et Pauli 
 
 Indigna familia? 
 
 Apud Wantagiam. 
 
 * 
 
 I think that I see you smiling at this. Pray correct it, if you 
 like the idea. It is not easy to express in ecclesiastical Latin 
 some of our present relations. Or perhaps I ought to say I 
 am too ignorant of terms to find it easy. We had the Arch- 
 deacon M[anning] with us for a few days in the week before 
 last. He was celebrant for us at the opening of a little 200 
 chapel which we have just built in an outlying hamlet. 
 
 I believe, though I dread to say it, that all things at Wantage 
 by God's blessing are prospering, and gradually moving forward 
 in the right direction. But how keenly one begins to feel the 
 absolute necessity, if we are to get on farther, of a regular and 
 so to speak common-place system of confession. Between that 
 and anything else, e.g. parochial visiting, friendly relations 
 between clergy and farmers, and all the rest, which some Bishops 
 and all 'safe and practical' people incessantly urge as the per- 
 fection of parish management, it seems to me that there is all the 
 difference between playing at things and real earnest work; that 
 the one is a mere evasion, the other the true Church system, 
 whose pain, like children dreading to have their teeth pulled out, 
 men urge every excuse to escape. I feel this more strongly 
 every day, while communicants are increasing with us, as 
 everywhere else, to an almost startling extent. ... I have 
 got the evidence before the Marriage Committee, and I will
 
 70 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 endeavour to study it sufficiently to write to our Bishop, who has 
 invited all his clergy to communicate with him on the subject. 
 I declined before, for I had no means of supporting by argument 
 my natural feelings, and I saw a danger in expressing them 
 without this. 
 
 REV. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 HPRSLEY VICARAGE, Oct. 6, 1848. 
 
 Our consecration is fixed for the 24th instead of the 18th on 
 account of the Chancellor's visitation. I trust this will make no 
 difference to your coming. The Bishop has kindly permitted us 
 to have the Holy Communion. The clergy to bring their gowns ; 
 service at eleven o'clock. 
 
 I have as yet, I am sorry to say, but very faint notions of the 
 ' preaching ' for which I proposed to retain you and others in that 
 week. My difficulties are chiefly these two : the dark nights 
 through which the people will have to tramp to the church, and 
 my being myself engaged on somewhat of a similar task in Leeds 
 on the Eve of All Saints and on All Saints Day. If we do 
 manage it, I thought the subjects ought to be such as would come 
 under this head, viz. : 'The Church and her Services as a 
 Preparation for Eternity.' Could you without much trouble dis- 
 tribute this into eight or nine heads, for the day and following 
 days till the 31st inclusive, the 31st being All Saints Eve? (I say 
 eight or nine because of the Sunday.) And you might take any 
 one you pleased. 
 
 I am quite delighted at the thought of your both coming. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Oct. 17 [1848]. 
 
 I am very stupid, and though I have been considering your 
 thesis for some time, I cannot satisfy myself with any result of 
 my thoughts. Would you take such a line as that of making the 
 (1) penitential, (2) joyous, (3) peaceful, (4) praiseful, (5) constant, 
 (6) satisfying, character of the Church services, and then connect 
 each with the church fabric?
 
 1853 CHI VA PIANO, VA SANO 71 
 
 I would try either (1) or (5). But I hope that you would not 
 think of such a weak arrangement, and that if you want me at 
 all, you will order me to what you like. 
 
 We are in the midst of a huge town fair, fortunately only 
 annual, but it troubles us a good deal, tempting communicants 
 and upsetting our schools. 
 
 Up to this point the course of the vicar's life at 
 Wantage had been fairly smooth. It would be im- 
 possible indeed that such radical changes as he 
 sought to make in the church and parish should 
 not provoke some opposition, but, all things con- 
 sidered, his parishioners accepted them with much 
 greater quietness than could have been expected. 
 This was owing to various causes. In the first 
 place, he found a genuine Church-feeling and tradition 
 in the people, although it had been buried for many 
 years in neglect and apathy. He used in after-years 
 to cite, as an instance, the fact that on .Good Friday 
 there had always been a celebration of Holy Com- 
 munion largely attended. He noticed also that the 
 elder generation of the women used to curtsey at the 
 Gloria. The daily services he established were at once 
 attended by some old men and women with regu- 
 larity. In fact, although the Church had been idle, 
 Dissent had not stepped into the breach, and there was 
 a general feeling that the parson should be supported. 
 Then, although he came full of energy and enthus- 
 iasm to the work, he did nothing rashly or violently. 
 He did not suddenly change the hours of service or 
 force startling novelties of ritual on a congregation 
 incapable of understanding them. What he found 
 good he kept, and was content to wait until he had
 
 72 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 trained the young generation up to a higher standard. 
 The services he introduced were supplementary to those 
 already in use, and he was careful to draw the dis- 
 tinction between what was essential and what was not. 
 Thus, as late as June 1865, he wrote in the 
 " Parish Journal." 
 
 A long conversation with makes me very doubtful as 
 
 to the propriety of continuing the choral Sunday morning ser- 
 vice after Sunday next. He is a good, sensible man, and disposed 
 to Church feeling. He assures me that most of his class in the 
 congregation [i.e. the class just above the tradespeople] are dis- 
 quieted by it. They do not object to choral service once in a 
 month, but it is the constancy of it which worries them. I do 
 not think that it would be right to force an arrangement through 
 which, however in itself more perfect and desirable, is yet against 
 the feeling of such people as these. All that can be done is to 
 work steadily forward towards educating their minds, and giving 
 them a love and taste for better things. When this is done, the 
 other will follow. Until it is done, any such advance in ritual 
 will defeat its own object. 
 
 This wise moderation and caution bore fruit in 
 the general acceptance of his system. Meanwhile 
 he was working hard to influence the younger 
 members of his flock. 
 
 He did not confine himself to collective teaching. 
 Over and over again notices occur in his " Parish 
 Journal " of personal interviews with individuals, 
 both old and young, whom he sought to bring to 
 a better way. His attention was not devoted to 
 purely ecclesiastical objects, but he threw himself 
 into business relating to the town. In his first 
 year he began to make proposals for a better drain- 
 age system, for sanitary matters had been sadly
 
 1853 BREAKERS AHEAD 73 
 
 neglected at Wantage, with the result that out- 
 breaks of typhoid fever were frequent. He also took 
 an active part in getting the town lighted by gas. 
 He was most regular in attending all meetings of 
 the town governors and commissioners. But a 
 time was at hand when he would meet with violent 
 opposition and bitter hostility ; and this was due 
 to causes for which he was not responsible. 
 
 The history of the Wantage Sisterhood is told in 
 another place in this book, so it will be sufficient to 
 say that at this time, 1850, although it was already a 
 most valuable auxiliary to the vicar in the parish, 
 he was not its spiritual director. His friend, Arch- 
 deacon Manning, whom he thoroughly trusted, rilled 
 that post. 
 
 The year was an eventful one for the Church of 
 England. The Gorham judgement had shaken the 
 faith of many of her children, and numerous seces- 
 sions to Rome followed. The Mother Superior, Miss 
 Lockhart, was one of those who forsook the Church 
 at this crisis, accompanied by one of the Sisters ; 
 and their secession was followed by that of Arch- 
 deacon Manning. 
 
 This was a heavy blow to the vicar. Apart from 
 the probability of his being held responsible for 
 the secession of the Sisters, which the outer world 
 would consider as the practical outcome of his 
 teaching, the defection of Archdeacon Manning, an 
 older man than himself, and one to whom he had 
 turned for counsel and advice, would be a grievous 
 shock to his confidence. The Gorham judgement
 
 74 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 itself gave him intense pain. If ever lie wavered 
 and felt doubtful as to his position as a member 
 of the Church of England, it was then. Not that 
 he for one moment contemplated joining the Church 
 of Eome; but he was shaken in his faith in his 
 own Communion. 
 
 His correspondence with Mr. Keble reveals his 
 own perplexities and fears, which, however, never 
 caused him to slacken for an hour in his strenuous 
 efforts to carry on the work for souls to which he 
 had been called. 
 
 REV. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 H. V., 3 Th. in Lent, 1850. 
 
 There is thought of trying a sort of Brotherhood in Plymouth 
 or Devonport, and some persons have agreed to act for a time 
 in that way, under parochial authority of course; but two 
 material things are as yet unprovided a Rule and a Superior. 
 Can you help us at all towards either? I mean, could you 
 send us any written rules which you have tried yourself, or 
 know to have been tried, in cases at all similar; and do you 
 know of any one who either now or after Easter could and 
 would go down to take the lead in the matter and whom you 
 would recommend ? A person who is in many respects very 
 unfit has promised to go for a month after Easter if no better 
 can be found, but he is most desirous to find a good 
 substitute. 
 
 I trust you have had much help and comfort in what I see 
 has been going on in your parts. 1 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, March 2 [1850]. 
 
 I rejoice much in the hearing of that Devonport move. 
 From my own experience I fear that I can say little likely 
 
 1 I.e. one of Bishop Wilberforce's Diocesan Missions.
 
 1853 ANXIETY 75 
 
 to help. But if I might suggest one danger I should fear, and 
 think it most needful to guard against, a certain scornfulness 
 and superciliousness which I seem to trace not unfrequently 
 among those engaged in high and holy works. Might not 
 some rule be drawn out in regard to dealing and conversing 
 with those who are without? Also I would, though you pro- 
 bably know them much better than I, mention the Hours, 
 translated by Albany Christie. I have found, as I think, 
 great advantage for myself in using the Latin Hours, and I 
 cannot imagine anything which can take their place. 
 
 The sisters at St. Mary's Home use the Hours in English. 
 Our Bishop, I believe, saw them and made no objection. Indeed, 
 why should he? There is, as you know, very little to alter, 
 for the simple reason that they are catholic. The only other 
 thing that strikes me is that a sort of "Fundamentum" should 
 be laid, after the manner of St. Ignatius, so that the. brethren 
 might fairly grasp the "quid nocet" and "quid prodest" argu- 
 ment. This would reconcile them to inferior places, etc. 
 
 I should like very much to have a word from you in reply 
 to this query. Will not the institution of Gorham (convicted 
 of heresy), in accordance with a decree of the Privy Council, 
 vitiate the whole position of the English Church ? Is it enough 
 to say this is an unjust law and must be altered? And might 
 not the men of old, who were bidden sacrifice to idols, have 
 said just the same and so sacrificed? Ought not the Church 
 to be in a position to refuse, and, if she be not, is she not 
 forfeiting her office as a teacher of the Truth, and so has she 
 not her candlestick removed ? I own that I feel a good deal 
 frightened lest we should be sophizing. I am not at all 
 unhappy at present, nor shall I be till the decree is distinctly 
 pronounced and acted on. And this ought to be enough for 
 the present. Yet having my pen directed Hursley-wards, it 
 seems natural to "speer one question at" the vicar. 
 
 The work of the Mission was most heart-filling. We 
 gathered strength and confidence as we went on; and at 
 Banbury, so far as one can judge, the effect was very deeply 
 felt. On Wednesday, e.g. the last day, two hundred com- 
 municants were present at eight, and at the eleven o'clock service, 
 when the Bishop preacht on Perseverance, between two thousand 
 and three thousand. It was a thrilling sight. We struck out
 
 76 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 in the evenings into the neighbouring villages, and preacht 
 on Conversion, etc. The churches were everywhere filled. It 
 was worth observing how readily and gladly the people answered 
 the call, and however the direct object of the work might 
 have succeeded, the following points are certainly gained : 
 
 1. The orderly array of clergy in procession, duly vested 
 in surplice, stole, and hood. 
 
 2. The possibility of unity of action among men holding 
 different shades of opinion, yet in the Church. 
 
 3. The assertion of a Bishop's right to deal with the souls 
 in his Diocese, and not merely with the clergy. 
 
 4. The sight of a clergy calling loudly to repentance. 
 
 5. The invitation to individuals to draw near for confession, 
 counsel, absolution, and comfort. 
 
 REV. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 H. V., 4th Friday in Lent, 1850. 
 
 Thank you over and over for your note on the Brotherhood. 
 I hope they have got their Rule from a better and more experienced 
 hand. You were not aware how very simple the information 
 which I meant to ask for : such as a time table, a copy of external 
 rules, etc. I am such an entire novice in such things. It has, 
 however, as I hope, begun. God grant it may go on and prosper. 
 
 I have been full of care about that Gorham case on the ground 
 that you suggest, and was for instituting a suit in the Arches 
 Court immediately against Mr. G. for heresy only, without refer- 
 ence to Institution or anything else, which I hoped would prevent 
 the Archbishop from giving him mission immediately. But it 
 seems that for several reasons this cannot be done. The next 
 thing will be to know exactly how far any Prelate giving him 
 mission or publicly owning his doctrine taints himself with 
 heresy. To this end one ought to know : (1) The exact articles 
 brought against him ; (2) the exact words of Sir Herbert Jenner 
 Fust's sentence ; (3) those of the sentence now pronounced, not 
 as being of any force, but as possibly containing what may taint 
 one acting upon it with heresy. For these documents I have 
 applied to Badeley. If it appear that there is really contradiction 
 of the Nicene Creed, I suppose Bishops in their Diocesan Synods,
 
 1853 THE GORHAM DECISION 77 
 
 and Archdeacons and Eural Deans in their fractional gatherings, 
 are competent to state publicly the true doctrine, to draw atten- 
 tion to the contradiction of it, and to ask all other Dioceses to 
 concur in demanding a Synod to put the thing to rights. I 
 know not how else the truth is to be ecclesiastically vindicated. 
 It is a great risk, but what else can be done 1 I have had half a 
 mind to write to your Bishop about it. All honour to him for 
 what he has just been doing for us for the work itself and for 
 the time of doing it. How mercifully we seem to be both 
 punished and relieved. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, March 11 [1850]. 
 
 Now that the decision is fairly (or rather unfairly) promul- 
 gated, I confess that my heart trembles for the results. And 
 after weighing the matter in such poor way as I am able, I can 
 bring myself to contemplate two alternatives only, and it seems 
 to me that it is my duty either to leave the Establisht Church 
 or to give up life and everything else if needful, to work towards 
 her Restoration. I cannot help feeling that any course short of 
 one of these must be to the soul's peril. Naturally one clings to 
 the latter. The former seems most awful to me, and I shrink 
 from any condition which it implies, i.e. from 'nonjuring' Scotch 
 Episcopal or Roman Communion. In regard to the first I feel 
 a dread of splitting, Babelising the Church. 
 
 My immediate object for troubling you is to ask whether you 
 could conveniently take me in for a night, if I can find a chance 
 to leave Wantage for a day or two. It seems presumptuous to 
 attempt to suggest, when heads so much wiser and hearts so 
 much purer are set upon remedying this awful grievance. But I 
 might privately and to you open a plan for action which occurs to 
 me. My idea is that a regular organization of parishes ought at 
 once to be formed, working under the Bishop wherever this is 
 possible, as I think that it would be in the Diocese of Oxford; 
 that a central committee, with as little demonstration or noise as 
 possible, so as not to excite jealousy and talk, might act as an 
 accumulator of facts and a provider of deputations, and that a 
 few men might be sent about for this purpose, who would speak
 
 78 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 earnestly, lovingly, clearly, and truly, to the various parishes, at 
 meetings to which the clergyman should admit by ticket such of 
 his parishioners as would attend for the purpose of good, not to 
 jeer or argue. This to be started at once, and not to cease till all 
 England is [illegible]. My parishioners are hearty in the cause. 
 
 W. J. B. TO EEV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 [? March, 1850.] 
 
 I left Hursley yesterday a happier and I hope a wiser and 
 patienter man than when I entered it. I feel peace and confid- 
 ence in the result of our struggle. Thank you very much for 
 all your kindness. I write now (1) to enclose a line from our 
 dear Bishop, (2) to ask you to print and let me have a copy of 
 your Hursley petition an audacious request and a few copies 
 of the Sarum Breviary prayers. 
 
 I hear from Carter as follows : "The Bishop of 0., whom I saw 
 yesterday after his return from London, where he had seen the 
 Bishop of L., reports that Convocation at present is hopeless, but 
 that there is good hope of getting the Archbishop to convene the 
 Episcopal Bench to make a decision not on the whole subject of 
 Baptismal Regeneration, but on the definite point of remission of 
 original sin in Baptism and its being no hindrance to grace, to which 
 point Keble narrows the ground. . . . The Bishop also reports 
 that the Bishop of L. will bring in a Bill to constitute the Upper 
 House of Convocation. The Court of Final Appeal, with some 
 judges as assessors, to be summoned by Royal writ for the express 
 cases." 
 
 In the Chichester archdeaconry ninety-two out of one hundred 
 are prepared to support the move. The Archdeacon l therefore 
 is in better heart. I found three more signatures at Wantage on 
 my arrival to a requisition to the Archdeacon of Berks to convene 
 his clergy. Every single one whom I have yet seen or heard of 
 in this neighbourhood, a singularly dull one, has willingly come 
 in to such a proposal. I think that we must be on our guard lest 
 we get hoodwinked by some of our Right Rev. friends. I infer 
 this from some touches in Carter's letter. Would it be well to 
 print the " whethers " of yesterday morning ? 
 
 1 Ven. H. E. Manning.
 
 i853 CONSULTATIONS 79 
 
 REV. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 H. V., Monday in Holy Week, 1850. 
 
 I hope I have not put you out by not writing sooner. I 
 rather waited for the good Doctor to be here, hoping to answer 
 more satisfactorily. He says, with regard to the Convocation 
 move, " All very well, if you can trust it when met." He quite 
 concurs in the misgivings about our Rt. Revd. friends. For 
 which reason I should think it very desirable that clerical 
 movements in the sense of our resolutions, and parochial 
 movements in the sense of this "petition," should be got up 
 as widely and as quickly as possible. As far as I can make 
 out, our people here are quite prepared to adopt this " petition," 
 only there is some confusion in their honest minds about the 
 Supremacy. ... I think I am, on the whole, for printing the 
 " whethers," l especially if the Low Church, or any considerable 
 number of them, are inclined to go with us on that point. I 
 am not sure that in saying this I am not more or less influenced 
 by the idea that Convocation cannot be got, but that a strong 
 call made for it would have a wholesome tonic effect upon the 
 Bishops. 
 
 Your letter was a great comfort to me. I do trust, for all 
 counter-appearances, there is an immense deal of soundness in 
 the heart of the English Church. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Sept. 2, 1850. 
 
 I have read carefully the B. C. U. 2 paper, and your alterations 
 (proposed). I feel very strongly with you that (II.) is most 
 objectionable, (III.) I could sign as it stands, (I.) as altered to 
 " as a Branch," etc. I do not feel any objection to the resolutions 
 perhaps I should like to see the expression 'repudiation of 
 Romanism ' modified. I suppose that we must meet somewhere, 
 
 1 "Probably a series of questions drawn up by Mr. Keble concerning 
 the right of the Privy Council to legislate for the Church, the 
 grounds of their decision about Holy Baptism, and the duty of 
 Churchmen at this crisis." R#v. W. Lock, D.D. 
 
 2 Bristol Church Union vide Life of Dr. Pusey, vol. iii., p. 274, etc.
 
 8o TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 and February is fairly distant. ... I think that it would be a 
 pity to stop agitation, unless any better plan is likely to be set on 
 foot immediately. I am more afraid of sleep and lotus-eater 
 lethargy than of anything else. We are in a frozen atmosphere, 
 and to sleep is to perish at least so it seems to me. I should 
 like very much to ask you about Church Unions. They do not 
 approve themselves to my mind, but so many better judges 
 uphold them, that I think I must be wrong. I want to see 
 Archidiaconal Unions, which would be a legitimate Church Synod, 
 especially when, as would sometimes happen, the Archdeacon 
 would head it. But I suppose that it is too late to talk of such an 
 arrangement now that the Church Unions are in full action. 
 
 We have been abroad to Germany to take charge of Ph. 
 Pusey. ... I saw a good deal (for a short visit) of the Catholic 
 clergy of the towns, and I am much struck by their friendliness 
 and freedom from assumption. It felt like talking to a brother 
 priest. Their tone was very different from that of some of their 
 new men. One of them askt me if I used the ' Pusey ritus.' l 
 
 The four letters which follow were written to a 
 young lady whose confidence in the Church of 
 England had been shaken by the Gorham judgement, 
 and by its consequences in the secession to Rome 
 of several of her friends. She, however, remained 
 steadfast to the Church of her baptism. 
 
 W. J. B. TO . 
 
 [February 10, 1850.] 
 
 ... I think that I ought to say that I am not frightened 
 about the Gorham case unless the decision is against the Bishop. 
 I look on the committee of Privy Council as merely the arbiters 
 appointed by the State to see that the Church keeps to the terms 
 of the concordat between Church and State embodied in her 
 formularies, as dealing, that is, merely with the establishment, 
 not necessarily touching the Church. If they reverse the 
 
 1 Many years afterwards, in 1880, a Tyrolese parson asked him, "Sind 
 Sie Posuit? " He was puzzled, but I guessed the meaning and answered, 
 "/a, geioiss" A. J. B.
 
 1853 COUNSELS OF PATIENCE 81 
 
 Bishop's decision, even then they are, supposing them to be 
 honest men, only doing their duty, and we have no right to 
 find fault with them, though we may find fault with our formu- 
 laries as being deficient in precision, and though we may and 
 must refuse to accept the decision for the Church. It will 
 be the decision for the Establishment unless Parliament agrees 
 to allow the Church to alter her formularies and still to 
 remain the Establishment. Have I made myself comprehensible ? 
 
 W. J. B. TO . 
 
 [March 10, 1850.] 
 
 ... In the first place our duty is, manifestly, to wait till 
 Mr. Gorham is inducted. Arius was triumphant till he died. 
 And even then it must be months before we can possibly judge 
 of our real condition. I am inclined, though I own not very 
 much, to the side of hope. But one thing is also clear that 
 we must be content to live in a struggle to our lives' end, to 
 be "men of strife." That, if no worse, is sure to be our portion. 
 We must fight for the truth by prayer and fasting, self-denial 
 in everything, stern unflinching resolution to look at nothing 
 else, be content to bear disappointment and coldness, to be 
 misunderstood and hated. "The sword" has come, and we 
 must not cling to "peace." . . . What a marvellous comfort- 
 to be drawn from Epistle, Gospel, Lessons, and Psalms of 
 this day. 
 
 W. J. B. TO . 
 
 WANTAGE VICAKAGE, June 12, 1850. 
 
 . . . Next, what is the difficulty 1 It lies in this that the true 
 notion of the Church is that she is the keeper of the Faith, and its 
 promulgator ; that it lies with her to lay down, to rearrange, to 
 define, to judge all that relates to it. Whereas now she is, it 
 would seem, likely to admit a heretic to the Cure of souls, and to 
 submit her decision to the revision of an extraneous and worldly 
 court. Miserable truly. Yet against this set the fact that these 
 evil doings are not tamely acquiesced in ; that a power is rising 
 through the Church which, one may reasonably believe, will and 
 must, working only in faith, prevail; that such doctrines and 
 demands as were never heard of here before, have been boldly 
 
 F
 
 82 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 brought out in high places, that the stir is not over, but rather on 
 the increase, and, if one may appeal to human authority, men 
 like Mr. Keble and Dr. Pusey, holy, learned, clear-sighted, 
 endowed with the spirit of martyrs, are far from disheartened. I 
 will say nothing of the distinctive errors of Rome, nor of the evil 
 dispositions which have shown themselves in those who have 
 left us, apparently proving that God has not been with them, but 
 one cannot help gathering from this more courage and determina- 
 tion to fight the great and good fight of faith, seeing that our 
 retreat is well-nigh cut off. . . . Our work is to pray for the 
 Church of England without misgiving. "Believe that ye shall have 
 it." To doubt is to lose our power, to bring about the very 
 crisis which we deprecate. To forsake the Church of England 
 now, is, in my view, to destroy that chance of unity which the 
 Eomanizers so stickle for. It may be the result of the faithless- 
 ness of and others that these difficulties encompass us now. 
 
 Surely the book of Job may teach us somewhat not merely of 
 patience but of a misunderstood position. He " had well-nigh said 
 even as they," i.e. the talk and folly of his friends had nearly 
 made him what they thought him at first, a hypocrite and sinner. 
 Just as men would now make the Church of England a sham and 
 an engine of Satan. 
 
 W. J. B. TO . 
 
 [26th Sunday after Trinity, 1850.] 
 
 ... I must in honesty say that I think our position a very 
 painful one, though not the less on that account to be retained. 
 I mean that since that fearful Gorham decision we are reduced to 
 a negative argument. We cannot defend ourselves. We can only 
 find fault with others. I am more comforted by the present 
 mobbing of Puseyites than by anything else. It looks like 
 reality. It is pleasant to find RC., Low Church, No Church, 
 rabble, etc., all banding together to destroy that one thing which 
 oneself is. ... You will be glad to hear that by God's mercy 
 the good work is prospering, and that I see my way to that 
 favourite idea of mine in former days, the double Sisterhood 
 for Penitents and Schools. 
 
 An address of sympathy was sent from Wantage to 
 Bishop Phillpotts which he briefly acknowledged.
 
 1853 OPPOSITION BEGINS 83 
 
 BISHOP PHILLPOTTS or EXETER TO W. J. B. 
 
 BISHOPSTOWE, TORQUAY, 
 Easter Eve, 1850. 
 
 REV. SIR, Accept my sincere, however tardy, thanks for the 
 address which you, and the other Clergy of Wantage, have had 
 the goodness to make to me. Be assured that I feel it strongly 
 to be not merely a gratification, but a support. 
 
 I have nothing to suggest. Such men will best act, when 
 opportunity shall be presented, on their own principles and 
 judgement. . . . 
 
 P.S. Your name, connected with Wantage, cannot but excite 
 stirring associations. 
 
 In talking of this troubled time, long afterwards, 
 William Butler was wont to say that the rise of decided 
 opposition in the parish might be dated from it. But 
 secessions to Rome were not the only evil fruit of 
 that disastrous year. On September 24, 1850, what 
 has ever since been called " Papal Aggression " took 
 place, and the Protestant feeling of the country was 
 kindled into a flame by the news of the Pope having 
 mapped out England into bishoprics. 
 
 This coming close upon the secession of the Sisters 
 ripened the seeds of suspicion and discontent which 
 the vicar's strongly pronounced Churchmanship and 
 fearless attack of abuses had sown. Those who had 
 come under his rebuke for sin, as well as those who 
 disagreed with his religious opinions, were glad to 
 seize the opportunity which these unhappy circum- 
 stances had given, to denounce him and his system. 
 What made this the harder for him to bear was the 
 fact that many who now went into opposition had 
 been up to this time good Church people and his
 
 84 TROUBLED TIMES 1847- 
 
 supporters. In the year 1852 the storm broke at a 
 Vestry meeting, held to consider the question of the re- 
 storation of the parish church. The story may be told 
 in his own words taken from the "Parish Journal." 
 
 Thursday, April 1. I must here record the first distinct 
 disaster, humanly speaking, which has befallen my ministrations 
 in this town. A Vestry meeting had been called after much 
 consultation, to consider the restoration of the church according 
 to plans prepared by Mr. Street. I felt the awkwardness of 
 such a meeting when Dissenters could take a part, and more 
 especially because I knew well their exceeding hostility to me. 
 
 But prest the Yestry as the only means of getting at the 
 
 Parish, and I think somewhat foolishly I agreed to hold it. 
 I say foolishly, for since I did not ask a rate, the whole 
 work might have been, and probably will be, carried through 
 without their permission. However, I was very anxious not 
 to appear to act in an arbitrary manner, the more as I am so 
 continually accused of doing so. Still I was not prepared for 
 the fierce opposition I encountered. On the previous day 
 handbills had been printed and circulated, and the Crier sent 
 round with his bell, and a proclamation inviting the people 
 (Protestants) to come and oppose Popery, etc. Then the 
 Wesleyan Preacher stimulated all within his reach, and 
 gave his men half a day to come and vote at the Vestry. 
 By these unscrupulous measures, for which I ought to have 
 been prepared, a strong party of Dissenters of the worst kind 
 were brought to the Vestry, and in a very short time it was 
 packt with enemies, ready for anything. I stated my views 
 and explained the plans, and was heard not unfavourably. 
 Then Mr. Wasbrough proposed as a resolution, and Cooper 
 seconded, that it is desirable to restore and reseat the church 
 without a rate, etc. W. Dixon opposed it, 1 and then the 
 clamour partially began with vociferous cheering of anything 
 
 said against the restoration. Then of Fawley opposed 
 
 it, not on any grounds except that he wisht to have a 
 
 1 Tradition has handed down his opening words : " People say as 
 how I be the pa'son's man ; but I bean't the pa'son's man in this here 
 job." He gave 25 before the business was over.
 
 i853 THE STORM BREAKS 85 
 
 door to his pew. ... So of Lockinge opposed it be- 
 cause of his pew. Then got up and said a great deal 
 
 about intoning the service, etc. of Charlton spoke of the 
 
 mummeries, flummeries, tomfooleries, and other savoury 
 expressions by which he chose to designate our services. 
 This brought up Trinder who, amid much interruption, took 
 occasion to speak of the doings of yesterday, the Crier, the 
 Rabble, etc. The word Rabble set the whole meeting by the 
 ears, and he ended his speech with much difficulty. Trinder 
 spoke nicely on the subject of the restoration and convincingly, 
 if argument could convince such a set. After a great deal of 
 noise, lasting for three hours, the proposition was put and 
 negatived by a large majority. So ended this unfortunate 
 Vestry. Have we prayed enough that the good work of the 
 restoration be accomplisht ? All seems to me to rest on this. 
 
 Writes an old friend : 
 
 I happened to be staying at the Vicarage at the time, 
 and remember how he came in broken down and dejected 
 for the moment, and blaming himself for having made 
 the attempt too soon. He had originally given himself a 
 longer time, and then had not waited. I heard that at the 
 meeting he was perfectly self-controlled and equal to the 
 occasion. You may have heard of one famous retort at this 
 meeting "Sir," said one of his opponents in a rage, "I am 
 at a loss to know whether you are more knave or fool." 
 "Time will show, sir, time will show," was the instant reply. 
 For perhaps two or three years after, this unpopularity 
 continued. I remember a rather grim joke which he was 
 fond of in those days, an allusion to the cry of the French 
 Revolution, a la lanterne. He used to declare that he expected 
 to be hung up to one of the lamp-posts in the town, and I 
 think there was a spice of earnest underlying the joke, and 
 that he really was persuaded that he might meet with 
 personal violence. Insulting inscriptions were chalked upon the 
 walls, and Sister Harriet told me that she and another from 
 the Home used to go out late at night to wash them off. 
 
 It was a strange and troubled time, but he was not a man 
 to flinch before violence. I always think the text, " I have 
 set my face as a flint," fitted him, and he gained the reputation
 
 86 TROUBLED TIMES 1847 
 
 of being (as I have heard it said) "hard as nails," though 
 there was sensitiveness and tenderness enough underneath the 
 surface, as those nearest to him knew very well. ... I have 
 said more than once that it was remarkably your father's lot 
 to have one after another come to Wantage, begin divers 
 works (which he himself would not have originated), and then 
 go and leave the deserted work on his hands. This was the 
 
 case with Miss Lockhart and Miss , and I want to ask 
 
 whether it was not also so with Mrs ? She built St. 
 
 Michael's and set up an Industrial School there, but I have 
 never known why or how she left the work she had begun. 
 At least we know that in every case he took up the deserted 
 work though not of his own originating and built it up again. 
 
 In addition to these parochial troubles he was not 
 without his share of domestic sorrow. On March 14, 
 1851, his eldest daughter Frances Charlotte, had died 
 at the age of five, only ten days after the birth of 
 another child. This was a deep and lasting grief. 1 
 
 His Bishop's sympathy was not wanting. 
 
 BISHOP OF OXFORD TO W. J. B. . 
 
 THE CARRIAGE, 
 NEAR BUCKLANU, March 17, 1851. 
 
 MY DEAR BUTLER, Thank you for your note by Balleine. 
 I was truly grieved to hear its sad announcement, and feel 
 deeply for you. This time of year comes to me so fully 
 charged with sorrows that I can enter into the griefs of all 
 others. This day ten years I walked out of our sweet 
 Lavington Churchyard a desolated man. I thank God for 
 the firm faith and meek resignation which He has given you 
 and your wife. It is a great thing to be so upheld. May He 
 never leave you nor forsake you. . . . 
 
 1 More than thirty years later he wrote to one who had been similarly 
 bereaved : " The death of one's child is like nothing else. Even 
 when, after many years, the wound is more or less healed, the 
 feeling always remains with one, of something being gone from 
 one's life a sort of blank like the loss of a limb."
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE PAEISH. 
 
 DURING the early fifties, William Butler was much 
 occupied in fighting the battle of definite Church 
 teaching in parochial schools. This was involved 
 in the use of the Church Catechism, for which he 
 vigorously contended. It was an anxious time, 
 for the National Society had shown a disposition 
 to compromise, i.e. not to insist on the Catechism 
 being used in Church schools, and he regarded this 
 as fatal to true Church teaching. Many letters passed 
 between him and some of the leading clergy of the 
 day, Mr. Keble, Canon Carter, and others, who 
 warmly supported his views. The following, how- 
 ever, will be sufficient to illustrate his position. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Feb. 25, 1853. 
 
 I have written to the Bishop and this is his answer : "I 
 believe you know that it had been, after a division, resolved 
 by the Nat. S. to offer to the Bishops a common form of 
 enquiry into the late teaching in schools ; but that on a ground 
 of technical correctness this decision was afterwards set aside.
 
 88 THE PARISH 1853 
 
 Still queries have been sent by many in consequence of the 
 promised communication from the N. S., and are being sent 
 by others. The answers, I understand, so far as they have 
 been sent, are very satisfactory. My advice, therefore, in the 
 matter would be that at present we await the replies that 
 are coming in, and that we resist all agitation until we see 
 from those replies what the real state of the case is. That 
 agitation has already led to the formation of an additional 
 (so-called) Church Education Society in opposition to the 
 N. S., one of the most threatening instruments, I think, of 
 our further divisions." Were you aware of this 'setting aside' 
 of which the Bishop speaks ? I for one was not, nor do I 
 think that any public notification has been made thereof. This, 
 if it be so, is scarcely fair and honest, and ought to be lookt 
 into. Then, one desiderates some more definite knowledge 
 than that 'queries have been sent by many.' By whom? 
 The Bishop of Exeter, I think. They have not been sent in 
 this Diocese, but possibly this may be attributed to the fact 
 that we are fairly mapt out among inspectors, who, at the 
 annual meeting at Cuddesdon, can bring forward, if desired, 
 the very minutest details. I hope that we may escape another 
 N. S. disturbance. Denison is a difficult dog to chain up, and 
 the worst of it is if he sets to work the others will do the 
 same, and we must go, to prevent the N. S. falling into their 
 hands. I am inclined to think, or rather I feel convinced, 
 that our Bishop will ' shew fight ' when once he is convinced 
 that the nodus is vindice dignus. And moreover, from much 
 acquaintance with him, I feel sure that he is quite reasonable, 
 I mean that he is quite ready to be convinced, even against 
 his own first impressions. But he is rather like the Athenians 
 at Sphacteria, afraid that all is going wrong except when he 
 is personally present, And, it must be owned, Denison is not 
 very adroit. The only plan, or part of a plan, therefore, which 
 occurs to me, is that he should be worked in all the steps 
 which may suggest themselves as desirable to others. I shall 
 write again to him soon and get, if I can, a more definite 
 explanation of the Committee of N. S. their doings. I ought 
 to say that he heads his letter to me 'Confidential,' though 
 really I cannot see what there is of ' Confidential ' in it. He 
 knows that you wrote to me, and that I wanted an answer
 
 i8S3 RURAL DEAN 89 
 
 partly for you, and therefore, of course, he does not object to 
 my passing his answer on. ... 
 
 A compromise was the result of many meetings 
 and much anxious correspondence, but on the 
 whole the definite Church party had the best of it. 
 
 About this time the office of Rural Dean was 
 added to his labours. 
 
 BISHOP OF OXFORD TO W. J. B. 
 
 26 PALL MALL, April 15, 1853. 
 
 MY DEAR BUTLER, Will you undertake the charge of the 
 Rural Deanery vacated by Dr. Nelson 1 You know me so well 
 that I need not say one word to you as to any particulars about 
 the office. Except that if in anything concerning it I can aid 
 you, it will ever be a pleasure to me to do so. I am ever 
 affectionately yours S. OXON. 
 
 My affectionate remembrances to Mrs. Butler. 
 
 With all his external work and interests the in- 
 ternal affairs of his parish occupied the larger share 
 of his thoughts, and indeed grew more absorb- 
 ing year by year. In spite of the check he had 
 received in 1852 in his attempt to get the parish 
 church restored, he had by no means lost heart or 
 confidence. He was content to go quietly on with 
 his work, while the money gradually accumulated 
 for the purpose which he felt sure he should eventu- 
 ally accomplish. 
 
 In an epitome of the year 1854 in the "Parish 
 Journal" he wrote: 
 
 This year has seen one great difficulty removed, removed 
 as I believe securely, and nothing now remains to prevent the 
 restoration of our church to a Christian condition except the
 
 90 THE PARISH 1857 
 
 obtaining of the sum needed for the purpose. Of this we 
 have in hand 1,050; with 500 more we may, without 
 imprudence, begin our operations. For this much prayer is 
 needed, as well as that no unkind feeling may remain, and 
 so mar the work when done. 
 
 By 1st October, 1855, he had so far won over his 
 antagonists as to be able to preside at the vicar- 
 age, at a meeting of influential parishioners, called to 
 deliberate on the restoration of the church. By 
 July 1857 this was an accomplished fact. 
 
 July 30. A day much to be remembered, as, by God's 
 mercy, an end and a beginning an end of the old degraded 
 ungodly state of God's House, which could not but act for evil 
 on the hearts of our folk, and the beginning of comeliness, 
 fitness, and beauty. This day is indeed an ample recompense 
 for much disappointment and weariness of heart, and it is, 
 perhaps for the very reason of all this, the more cheering and 
 sustaining. Five years ago we were all out of spirits. The 
 hope of restoring our church to the beauty of holiness seemed 
 almost a dream. We had no means, and the parish had set 
 itself fiercely against it. Now all has been done, so far as it 
 is done, well, and there is scarcely one in the parish who has 
 not in some way contributed to the work. All have been 
 roused to enthusiasm, and a restoration of a specially pro- 
 nounced kind is so popular, that I cannot but feel and hope that 
 it will in a degree affect all the churches in the neighbourhood. 
 
 We had endeavoured to persuade the Bishop to have no 
 late Celebration, but as he objected to this, of course we gave 
 way at once, and arranged accordingly. We had, however, our 
 usual Celebration at eight o'clock, at which some 75 attended. All 
 were hard at work till eleven, when the numbers of the clergy 
 began to increase. Mackonochie l had the charge of marshalling 
 the clergy, and of giving those who were to assist their respective 
 commissions. The arrangement of the church within fell to 
 Sawyer, and Harvey had the choir. Purdue continued in the 
 
 1 Rev. A. H. Mackonochie, afterwards of St. Alban's, Holborn.
 
 1857 THE CHURCH RESTORED 91 
 
 barn where the feast was prepared. Porter kept the decorations 
 
 in order. Mr. of Charlton kindly lent his carriage to 
 
 convey the Bishop, and I went in it to meet him. We had 
 sent an omnibus to Wantage Road, and a van to Faringdon 
 Road, and they both returned loaded with friends. A Dutch 
 barn belonging to Mrs. Stroud was prepared on the vicarage 
 lawn in order that the clergy might vest in it, and when the 
 Bishop drove up to the vicarage nearly 100, and very soon after 
 upwards of 100, were collected in order. The procession of 
 clergy and choristers amounted to 160, and they advanced 
 slowly to the church round the north and east sides under an 
 arch of green (which had been prepared by the Rents 1 voluntarily) 
 singing the 68th psalm, to the church. The day was propitious, 
 and a little rain that had fallen served to make everything 
 brighter and fresher. The church was quite full ; I suppose 
 that upwards of 1000 were collected in it, all orderly and 
 reverent. There was no bustle or confusion. The Bishop said 
 the first part of the service at the Litany desk, and then 
 attended by Archdeacons Randall and Clerke and by myself, 
 he proceeded into the sanctuary. Nothing could be more 
 beautiful than the decorations, which consisted of heavy green 
 wreaths fitted into all the arches and members of the tower 
 arches with festoons wherever it was desirable to cover a bare 
 space. A pastoral staff was lent by Radley, and a chair and 
 lectern for the Bishop by Mr. Margetts, of Oxford, from whom 
 the Eagle, the gift of the curates of the parish, had been 
 purchased. The "Home" provided the Litany desk. The 
 service was sung by the united choirs of Lambourne and 
 Wantage. All were vested in surplices. The service began 
 shortly after twelve, and was fairly sung, well in parts, some- 
 times but poorly, and some careless mistakes were made. The 
 Bishop of course preached a very noble sermon, and the 
 collection was made by ten men. It amounted to 167, which, 
 with 35 in the morning and 10 in the evening, gave us 
 220, a great help towards clearing off our debt. . . . The 
 service was not over till four o'clock, when, after a short interval, 
 the whole party adjourned to the barn in Newbury Street, in 
 which accommodation and food had been provided for 700 
 people. Nothing could have been more admirable than the 
 1 Local builders.
 
 92 THE PARISH 1857 
 
 arrangements. At the high table, which was raised considerably 
 above the ground, sat Mr. Wasbrough (chairman), the Bishop, 
 the Archdeacons, the Vicar, Mr. Atkins, H. Barnett, Popham, 
 T. Bowles, and several ladies, while the other tables were 
 stretched out before it, each under the superintendence of some 
 one deputed for the purpose. All were very orderly and 
 attentive, and evidently taken and even carried away with the 
 event of the day. At about half-past seven we again gathered 
 upon the vicarage lawn and went in procession to church. The 
 Archdeacon preached, Trinder and Popham read the lessons, 
 Harvey said the service as in the morning. The church was 
 filled, though, from the absence of a great many of our morning 
 visitors, not so fully as in the morning, but with the people 
 whom one most wisht to see, our labouring people ; and 10, of 
 which much was in copper, was collected. . . . The day was 
 kept quite as a holiday, and many of the shops were closed. 
 
 Thus past such a day as I cannot bring myself to imagine 
 that I shall ever see again. Thanks again and again forever 
 be to Him who has bountifully heard our prayer and granted 
 our desire. May He now but give us strength and grace to 
 carry on this work to the end, to view it but as a stepping-stone 
 to higher things, to rest not till we make our parish such a 
 spiritual temple as our church now is. 
 
 One of those associated with him in the years 
 immediately preceding and following the restoration 
 of the parish church, the Rev. W. G. Sawyer, now 
 vicar of Taplow, has given a sketch of the Vicar's 
 relations with his " brethren," as he was fond of 
 calling his assistant curates. 
 
 In the summer of 1854, after having been disabled for a 
 year, I happened to be in the neighbourhood of Wantage ; 
 for some reason or other they were in want of help, and I 
 was asked to go over for a Sunday. I went for one day, 
 and stayed five and a half years. Butler was going that 
 Sunday evening to preach for Milman at Lambourne; he asked 
 me to go with him, and I well remember how up on the
 
 1854 REV. W. G. SAWYER'S RECOLLECTIONS 93 
 
 Berkshire Downs, he offered me the curacy vacant by the 
 appointment of H. P. Liddon to Cuddesdon. Up to that time 
 my acquaintance with Butler had been very slight; but in 
 this way a friendship arose which has been very precious to 
 me. Whatever little work I may have been able to do in the 
 Church of God has mainly been the result of the training I 
 received at Wantage. Important as has been the place which 
 Butler occupied in the work of the English Church at large, 
 he must always remain in the minds of us of the older genera- 
 tion, as the Vicar of Wantage. He showed perhaps above 
 any man of the period, what the Church could do among the 
 mixed population of a small country town. I often think that 
 it is impossible for the younger men among us to realize what 
 was the condition of the Church in a place like Wantage fifty 
 or sixty years ago. Butler's difficulties were immense, but 
 the force of his will overcame them all; and the intense earnest- 
 ness of his work won the respect of those of his parishioners 
 who disagreed with him. When I first went to Wantage the 
 church was still unrestored, and not very long before Butler 
 had received the rebuff, which it must have been very hard 
 for him to bear the refusal of a faculty for the restoration 
 of the church in consequence of the opposition of some of 
 the parishioners. As time went on he was thankful that 
 the restoration had been postponed, because, as he often said, 
 the work would not have been so satisfactorily done as it 
 ultimately was. In looking back to these days, what strikes 
 me perhaps more than anything else, is the patience with 
 which the Vicar waited, and the patient way in which he 
 dealt, not only with the people generally, but with his opponents 
 in particular. Never keeping back the truth, letting every 
 one know what he believed, in matters which he considered 
 non-essentials it is wonderful how forbearing he was, in 
 consideration for the feelings and prejudices of the people, 
 and how gentle he was in word and deed. His curates were 
 often impatient, and would have hurried things on, but we 
 had always before our eyes his example, the example of one 
 who would "quietly wait." And he had his reward. When 
 the time came for the re-opening of the church by Bishop 
 Wilberforce, the whole parish, with only one or two exceptions, 
 rejoiced with him in the completion of a great work. I well
 
 94 THE PARISH 1857 
 
 remember the enthusiasm with which the parish generally 
 provided at their own cost the great luncheon which followed 
 the re-opening services. He was friendly with the noncon- 
 formists of the town, and, as time went on, I do not suppose 
 that a more united and friendly parish could be found through- 
 out the country. And this without the slightest compromise 
 of principle, but from kindness of heart, and that earnestness 
 of purpose which always, sooner or later, wins its way. 
 
 In his dealings with his curates he was a model Vicar. 
 Very plain spoken, and somewhat stern at times when things 
 were done which he did not like, and still more so when 
 things were left undone which ought to have been done, it 
 was impossible not to recognize the loving heart which lay 
 beneath. However hard we worked, we always had before 
 us the example of one who worked a great deal harder. His 
 work was essentially the work of common sense, and he hated 
 fads. I know that I was at times a trial to him, but when I 
 fancied myself put upon, and perhaps grumbled a little bit, 
 the way in which the Vicar always put himself in the wrong 
 and humbled himself before me sent me away utterly ashamed 
 of myself and humiliated to the dust. Wantage was essentially 
 a place of work, and in the same way as Bishop Wilberforce 
 raised the whole tone of Episcopal work, so did Butler raise 
 the tone of the work of the parochial clergy. And the spirit 
 of work learned at Wantage was never, I believe, lost by the 
 Wantage curates when they went to parishes of their own. 
 Wantage did for the south of England what Leeds did for 
 the north. 
 
 The impressions of Canon Carter of Clewer, one 
 of William Butler's few surviving contemporaries, 
 who was much associated with him in diocesan 
 work in the early years of Bishop Wilberforce's 
 administration, may fitly be inserted here. 
 
 I will gladly endeavour to give the impressions made on me 
 by your dear father, and by the great part he played in the 
 Church's life and work. We were contemporaries in the Oxford 
 Diocese as it was being formed into a new Diocese by Bishop
 
 1850 CANON CARTER'S RECOLLECTIONS 95 
 
 Wilberforce, your father commencing his work at Wantage in 
 1846, myself at Clewer in 1844. We were, locally, rather far 
 apart, and alike constantly occupied, and only touched one 
 another on certain occasions, though having common aims and 
 common objects at heart. It was part of Bishop Wilberforce's 
 plan in moulding the Diocese into one whole, to gather together in 
 his hospitable home at Cuddesdon from time to time those who 
 worked under him. Those gatherings were of the happiest kind ; 
 and there, together with the Bishop, we planned the Oxford 
 Lent Sermons, and the missions which the Bishop held at 
 different centres in the Diocese, missions, not, as now, organized 
 scientifically, so to say, under two or three priest-missioners, 
 but under himself, aided by several of the clergy. At 
 Cuddesdon and in these missions was my chief opportunity 
 of intercourse with your father. 
 
 But this is to anticipate. My first acquaintance with him 
 was after the Gorham judgement, when, together with two 
 earnest sympathizers, now with him at rest in God, Milman, 
 afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, and Robert Gordon, then Rector 
 of Avington, we joined in pressing forward the protest made 
 under Archdeacon Berens in his Synod. By that time your 
 father had established his fame as a parish priest. It was 
 owing to his having thus shown his power in a true Church 
 line of work, that Manning, then Archdeacon, having trained 
 four sisters to be the nucleus of a religious Community, fixed 
 on Wantage as their home. This, in its after consequences, 
 served to bring out great points of high value in your father's 
 character. Manning's secession from the Church of England 
 broke up this little band of Religious, the Sister-Superior and 
 one of the other three following him to Rome. I remember 
 well the anxiety of the crisis, and the agitating question 
 of the possibility of reconstituting the work, and perpetuating 
 it through those who remained faithful to their dedication. 
 One cannot now adequately conceive the pressing nature of 
 such an anxiety at a time when all around was filled with 
 distrust, and Sisterhoods among us were but in their infancy. 
 We all feared that there could be little hope of pursuing 
 what had been so earnestly begun. But then your father's 
 endurance and trust, his moral energy and courage and practical 
 wisdom, were seen; and one rejoiced with him in being able
 
 96 THE PARISH 1851 
 
 to re-establish the Community out of the apparent wreck, so 
 as to become, under his care, so prosperous and valuable a 
 Society as it has long been growing with its widely extended 
 works. It was a crowning instance of what seems to have 
 been one of your father's prominent characteristics, that what 
 he set his mind to accomplish he could not fail to carry through. 
 
 Our Church life at that period, and for many years afterwards, 
 was a scene of constant progress among those who were bent 
 on sustaining what had been gained, or reviving what had 
 been lost and was still wanting. I suppose it was the variety 
 of mind, each with its own plans and prepossessions, acting in 
 different ways and under different circumstances, yet with 
 common desires at heart, to which is due, under God's mercy, the 
 amount of success which has attended the manifold efforts of 
 past years. Much depended on the view taken of what was 
 due to authority a true note of Catholic life much on 
 individual tendencies, and partly also on local circumstances, the 
 issue being, whether or no to join societies then forming and work 
 in common with others, or to do one's best alone with one's own 
 separate opportunities. Your father's strong personality and 
 trust in his power and energies, with a great unwillingness to 
 be hampered by other minds or to be dependent on other agencies, 
 led him to take the latter course. There was a further influence 
 evidently telling upon him in the same direction. He seems 
 to have always kept true to what are known as Tractarian 
 principles, under which he had grown up, and a sense of what 
 is due to authority was an important element among the 
 lessons taught us by the great leaders of that movement. Your 
 father, whose mind was always resting on great principles, was 
 influenced by this feeling far more than many among us. This 
 evidently governed his conduct in the course of the struggles 
 which went on during his time year after year. 
 
 This sense of authority, as a habit of mind, and a sufficient 
 law of life, appeared constantly in matters of greater or less 
 importance. He was once asked to attend a temperance 
 meeting and to speak. The tenor of his words was, "What 
 can one need more than what the Church Catechism teaches 
 as to temperance and soberness ?" The promoters of the cause 
 who desired to press total abstinence as the means of furthering 
 temperance said he had spoilt the meeting. He could only
 
 i855 CORRESPONDENCE 97 
 
 recognise the one straight course, sufficiently, as he thought, laid 
 down for us all. 
 
 I was at Wantage in early days at some of the great gatherings 
 held in order to celebrate your father's parochial achievements. 
 I often since heard details of his work which have been full of 
 lessons to others. It was, as we supposed, Mr. Gladstone's 
 appreciation of his faithfulness, his thoroughness, his powerful 
 energy in the Church's work, which led to his being raised 
 to other spheres and higher dignities. I have of late years 
 been able only to follow him in thought with thankfulness for 
 what he has been enabled to do in his ceaseless activities. We 
 have rarely met, each being very fully occupied in our separate 
 ways. I remember your father as one of my earliest friends 
 and fellow-workers during an eventful period, and the remem- 
 brance of what he was and what he has done remains as the 
 witness of the greatness of his aims, and of the truth and 
 reality which have always marked his course, and must for ever 
 embalm his memory. 
 
 Most of the correspondence of this period relates 
 to ' burning questions,' the ashes of which are still 
 warm. The letters here given are on more general 
 
 subjects. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS SISTER. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Feb. 14, 1855. 
 
 . . . How strange it is to find life gradually ebbing away, 
 and yet to feel no older, weaker, or less full of interests, than 
 when some seventeen years ago, our dear F. and you and I used 
 to interchange our ' cracks ' between Southgate and Trinity. Of 
 course I don't mean that plenty of events have not occurred to 
 alter the channel of thoughts and interests, but that the power of 
 being interested and engrossed in these old and new objects 
 exists with the same force as ever, and makes it still as difficult 
 as ever to realise that death is stalking after us, and gaining daily 
 upon our footsteps. And still it seems as hard as ever not to 
 struggle after a sense of present security from future possibilities 
 and contingencies, and not to long after that state of worldly
 
 98 THE PARISH 1857 
 
 prosperity which enables its possessor to say to his soul, " Soul, 
 thou hast much goods laid up for many days." I suppose 
 nothing but a real effort to feel and believe in that exactly 
 counter command of our Lord, "Sufficient for the day," etc., can 
 bring us out of that most dangerous error, which will go along 
 with unabated strength and vigour of body and mind. The 
 peculiarity of the poor worn out Crimean soldiers is that they 
 don't care to move, to eat, or to live, but when they are once 
 in the hospital, they only ask for present rest. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS SISTER. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Feb. 13, 1857. 
 
 . . . Do you know that in the old Kalendar St. Sckolastica, 
 sister of the great St. Benedict, stands as the patron of 
 Feb. 10 ? The name seems well adapted to my especial line 
 of work. 
 
 As you say, birthdays have a different meaning as one 
 passes on in life from infancy to youth, from youth to mid- 
 age, from mid-age whither ? And it seems very awful to be 
 touching on shores which once appeared so very, very distant, 
 and to feel that each little promontory round which the ship 
 of one's life has past has its own tale to tell of omissions 
 and commissions, forgetfulness of the guiding Presence, sloth- 
 fulness and selfishness. Each seems markt, as it were, by 
 some gipsy camp-fire, black yet still smoking up to heaven, 
 where one has listlessly spent that precious awful gift of time 
 and which now bears its solemn witness. My heart often 
 sinks within me when I think of thirty-nine years past and 
 gone with their summer and winter, seed time and harvest, 
 and so little laid up to God. Only there is the trust that 
 that precious Blood cleanseth from all sin, and that He Who 
 knows our weakness will accept the short and imperfect 
 snatches of prayer which one is able to utter. 
 
 Now I have said a great deal about myself, and very little 
 about you. It is and has ever been my special blessing to 
 have known and loved my sisters. I always think that sister's 
 love is the mainstay, after mother's love, to English lads at 
 school and college. I am sure that I found it so. ...
 
 
 1857 A WEDDING FEAST 99 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, 1857. 
 
 Yesterday was a most busy day. Before twelve I had taken 
 part in a celebration of H. C., two Churchings (for the tire- 
 some folk would come in separately), one Baptism, and the 
 
 wedding of . This quite independently of P.T. classes 
 
 and other work. . . . implored me to dine with them 
 
 and I consented. 
 
 Scene I. A room upstairs. Table covered with tra/nuts 
 and smaluuts, oranges, figs, and a huge bridecake, raisin, ginger, 
 
 orange, and currant wine. Enter and wife, , Mr. 
 
 , a friend with huge Crimean beard, a married young lady 
 
 intimate with bride, and the three Miss , and wife. 
 
 The bride's small brother and big mother. Vicar. Wine and 
 cake as Vorschmack Conversation flagging but facetious, 
 "little and good." Ladies rustling in silk. Gentlemen in 
 white waistcoats and do. gloves. 
 
 Scene II. The small room below with a large table on 
 which stand beef, mutton, turkey, ham, vegetables a discretion, 
 to be removed for P. puddings, mince pies, rhubarb, black- 
 currant, gooseberry, "Damascene," raspberry, tarts and, lastly, 
 
 cheese. The former company enter (Mrs. and who 
 
 have very red faces having been hard at work till the present 
 
 moment). Mrs. retains a white apron over her bridal 
 
 costume as the insignia of her late office as cook. Every one 
 does justice, ample justice, to viands, bride, next to whom I 
 sit, has two vigorous goes of turkey and ham. I squeeze in 
 a few jokes of a mild kind, but conversation is decidedly 
 scanty. Crimean hero is apparently connected with the Stock 
 Exchange, for some allusion to the Bank makes him for the 
 first and only time open his mouth to speak. After cheese 
 and grace we adjourn to 
 
 Scene III. Room as in Scene I. Company the same save 
 
 and Crimean, who stay below to smoke a pipe of hospitality 
 
 and peace. Mrs. joins the party upstairs and from time 
 
 to time utters some highly edifying remarks, pious and 
 suggestive. A few more jokes, but conversation still very 
 slight. All however seem very happy, and at 4.30 I summon 
 and Crimean from their tobacco, propose 's health
 
 ioo THE PARISH 1858 
 
 and his bride's, and depart like a rocket in a shower of 
 friendly words. . . . 
 
 In the early part of 1854, the Rev. Henry 
 Parry Liddon came to be curate at Wantage. His 
 powers of preaching were at once recognised and 
 appreciated by Mrs. Butler, a keen critic. In after 
 years, her husband was fond of quoting her remark 
 on hearing his first sermon: "That young man 
 preaches better than the Archdeacon " (Manning). 
 
 This was the beginning of a warm and lasting 
 friendship one that was only severed by death 
 between the Vicar and Liddon. The latter was 
 at Wantage only about a year, and then went 
 as Vice-Principal to the newly-founded Cuddesdon 
 College. From that time dates a close and intimate 
 correspondence which only ended at the death of 
 Dr. Liddon in 1890. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Dec. 11, 1858. 
 
 . . . We have had two very happy days. The little Charlton 
 school was opened by a service therein, followed by a service 
 in church, and a great supper to farmers, clergy, and labourers, 
 provided by the farmers. Yesterday we had our second Con- 
 firmation of this year, and a Confirmation at the Home. 
 Mackonochie was with us on Thursday; remarkably well and 
 cheery, and apparently prudent and anxious to work simply 
 for souls. 
 
 W. J. B. TO KEV. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 RED HILL, Aug. 12, 1861. 
 
 I have read your sermon carefully, and though I think the 
 first part too elaborate and reasoned for the reading of most 
 people, yet for the sake of the second I should be very sorry
 
 i86i LETTERS TO REV. H. P. LIDDON 101 
 
 were it not printed. I have therefore sent it to Parker, 
 requesting him to forward it to St. Edmund Hall. I do not 
 know your address, though that seems safest. I have not 
 received the Episcopal discourse and now that he is fairly 
 launched on his travels, with his six Cathedrals to preach in, 
 I cannot imagine when it will come tojhand. We left Wantage 
 on Thursday, after getting through various parochial and 
 Diocesan Board engagements, and to-morrow we hope to cross 
 the Channel. May the S.W. wind subside a little ! . . . I was 
 much interested on Saturday in the consecration of Woodyer's 
 new church, built by his exertions and mainly at his expense. 
 He has bought (some years since) a very pretty little estate, 
 called Graffham, near Guildford and since his wife's death, 
 his great desire has been to build a church to her memory. 
 He has spared no expense nor effort of mind upon it, and 
 the whole effect is most religious and touching; the glass is 
 Hardman's, and it makes me more confident even than before 
 of his enormous superiority to any of his fellows. ... I am 
 
 staying here with my old school-fellow and college friend . 
 
 It is most delightful to be in such a house. He is a lawyer, 
 and married early to the sister of another old school-fellow. 
 They are both thoroughly right-minded] and religious (of the 
 right sort). He has built himself this house, and in it a 
 little oratory for family prayer purposes. Close to him is 
 
 his brother-in-law, Mr. , another layman, of exactly the 
 
 same mind. His boys are at Bradfield. Depend upon it, 
 nothing ever came near the ' Oxford Movement ' for influencing 
 and turning heavenwards the minds of this class of men. Alas, 
 alas ! the new lights, with their religion of doubt and scepticism, 
 little know what they throw away. Such households as 
 
 this make one feel it bitterly. And yet men like are 
 
 what they are because of their generation. How wonderful 
 it seems. We enjoyed your visit very much. It did us all 
 good. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 CALDICOT HOUSE, WATFOKD, 
 Sept. 10, 1861. 
 
 You will see from this that we are at home again, after some- 
 thing more than three weeks of touring. We went the old route
 
 102 THE PARISH 1861 
 
 of Folkestone and Boulogne to Paris. Thence through Burgundy 
 to Lyons, stopping at Sens and Dijon spent a couple of days 
 in intense heat at Lyons thence down the Rhone to Valence 
 and then in various voitures to Aubenas in Ardeche hunting up 
 volcanoes and churches, and sleeping in little village inns. Le 
 Puy in Velay, a most wonderful city of the tenth century ; Cler- 
 mont (it seerns still to echo with Diex le volt), from both of 
 which we made excursions ; and so home by Bourges, Orleans, 
 and Amiens the last for the sake of the clean and sweet hotel, 
 which saves one the stench and expense of sleeping in Paris. 
 Eiddell l is a charming ' compagnon de voyage,' most gentle, 
 unselfish, bright, and accomplisht vigorous, too, and up to any 
 amount of bodily exercise, and thoroughly right minded and 
 sympathetic in all greater things. The tremendous heat (thermo- 
 meter at 96 Fahr. in the shade on a north wall one day) was 
 the only drawback. We had not a drop of rain the whole time. 
 I suppose that the south of France is one of the hottest places 
 in the world, and this year it was agreed by all that the heat was 
 more than the oldest inhabitant could remember. We have 
 come back very geologically inclined, and one picks up the stones 
 and flint of the London clay, looking instinctively for lava and 
 basalt. The general effect of Auvergne, looking down upon it 
 from the Puy de Dome, or the Pic de Sancy, at Mont Dore les 
 Bains, is as if a collection of dust holes and cinder bins had been 
 poured out upon it in little heaps. The whole soil is cinereous, 
 pustulated with volcanoes, from which immense masses of lava 
 and basalt have been belched forth on the original granite 
 tilling up valleys, altering the course of rivers and damming 
 them up into lakes, leaving here and there huge waves, where 
 the lava has cooled quickly, just like breakers foaming upon the 
 shore. In course of time the water and the atmospheric in- 
 fluences acting on the weaker parts have worn them down and 
 made deep valleys, very fertile and lovely, mostly covered with 
 huge chestnuts, and permeated with springs of the most delicious 
 water very often highly chalybeate and effervescent flowing 
 right under the volcanic strata. The sides of the rivers and 
 gorges are fluted as it were with regular pillars or prisms of 
 basalt and, if the top soil be worn away, you see them in as 
 regular a pavement as Minton's tiles would make octagonal or 
 . James Eiddell, Fellow of Balliol.
 
 1861 A HOLIDAY IN FRANCE 103 
 
 some other mathematical form. Then sometimes, as at Le Puy, 
 crags of basalt or lava having a little more iron in them than the 
 masses round, have resisted the forces- round them, and stand up 
 in the strangest way like huge craggy teeth in the middle of the 
 valleys, covered with churches (of course S. Michel) or castles. 
 
 Well, you will be tired with geology, and I am sorry to say, 
 I have little else. The churches of Auvergne are very striking, 
 mostly of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries ; Byzantine 
 in structure and detail, with a series of domes, or rather quasi- 
 domes, in lieu of internal vaulting. From what little I saw, 
 I should imagine that the Auvergne folk are not very strong, 
 like the Breton, in the matter of religion. On the weekdays 
 one could run over the churches before twelve, which rarely 
 happens elsewhere, on account of the continual Masses, which 
 one cannot disturb. We heard a sermon at Lyons, for men 
 only, to which we were admitted by ticket. It was in the 
 cathedral, and about 500 were present. The preacher was 
 very eloquent and earnest. He said that he should break 
 through his usual course, because of the Octave of the Assump- 
 tion, and took for his theme the "culte" of Mary. Nothing 
 could be more illogical than the discourse ; it was full of asser- 
 tions and even misquotations from Scripture, yet telling to 
 the folk addressed; neither Riddell nor I felt at all more in- 
 clined to accept the views which the preacher held. It is 
 very sad to see how the worship of Mary is obscuring that 
 of the One Mediator. By the way, Ars is not far from Lyons, 
 and I picked up some histories of that good curffs life and 
 death. They are most interesting, and if only I had the pen 
 of a ready writer I would certainly cook up something for the 
 ' Ecclesiastic ' which alone would enter into the thing heartily. 
 It is very instructive to our parochial clergy to have such 
 things brought before them. Men little know what earnest 
 hearts and holy lives can do. It seems that to the very last 
 he was full of apprehension for the future. " Dreadful thought," 
 he said, "to appear before the judgement seat of God with 
 my poor life of a cw6." 
 
 I hope to return on Saturday to work. There is a good 
 deal to think about, when I do begin to take things in 
 hand. . . . Then there is all the Home and St. Michael's, 
 with their many branches of difficulty, and finally the P. Council
 
 104 THE PARISH 1862 
 
 under Lowe have entirely reorganised the whole system 
 of grants, making it very difficult to see our way, in 
 the matter of s. d., to keep the schools going. I have 
 glanced over their Code, and at first sight I am inclined 
 to think that all will be right in the end. You know that 
 I am going out as a deputation for S. P. G. in Cornwall from 
 Oct. 6-20. 
 
 I have received the Bishop's MS. sermon, and the proof 
 of yours. . . . The expression, "incarnate in language," is, 
 I think, hardly accurate, considering the exact meaning of 
 "incarnate." Would it not be well to head the pages with 
 the subject as Newman's are ; you know what I mean. Those 
 little things help the reader very much. 
 
 Max Miiller's lectures are in this house. I shall hope to 
 read them if I can get an hour or two amidst the chatter 
 and interests of family re-union. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, July 16, 1862. 
 
 . . . Did you read the Times article on the Congress. It 
 handled it according to its unbelieving cynical wont, but I 
 must own that bating the sarcasms, etc. I incline to agree 
 with its tenor. I was startled to find that Church matters 
 were to be dealt with like geological, social science, etc., by 
 papers and sections, and I own to an increasing feeling of 
 discomfort at the terrible physical activity of our brethren. 
 They really remind me of the description of the adversary in 
 the Book of Job "going to and fro in the earth," etc. I 
 firmly believe that parishes are suffering greatly from the 
 continual absence and the desultory habits of the clergy. Men 
 find out that it is much better fun to meet their friends 
 and talk at these gatherings than "to tend the homely, 
 slighted Shepherd's trade" of visiting cottages and working at 
 schools. I had intended nevertheless to enter an appearance ! 
 
 but a letter from made me so anxious about that 
 
 instead of turning off at Didcot to Oxford, I took the express 
 train up to London. . . . On Tuesday is our Commemora- 
 tion at St. Mary's Home. You will think of us as we of you.
 
 1862 THE QUESTION OF VOWS 105 
 
 The Warden of All Souls' will preach. We purpose an early 
 Celebration at the Home, and 11 o'clock matins with sermon 
 and second Celebration in church. Luncheon at the Home. 
 Evensong at the Home at 4. All goes on there very happily, 
 and a few more Sisters slowly join us. ... I agree with 
 your argument on the subject of vows, in the main. But, of 
 course, admitting that the principle of vows is accepted by the 
 Church by the instances of ordination and marriage, it is 
 quite another question whether it is advisable to applj r it to 
 Sisterhoods. We must not, I think, press the question at 
 present. Once let the institution grow strong and important, 
 and it may dictate its own terms. I was not much pleased 
 to find that Sisterhoods were one of the subjects for the Congress 
 to discuss. (The word Deaconess seems to me detestable, and 
 the natural correlative is Priestess. There is an animus in the 
 nse of it.) There are always a host of folk ready to rush in 
 and make talk-capital of what others have been doing, and I 
 dreaded, not as it seems without some justice, what such 
 folk would say. what a wonderful book is the book of 
 Proverbs and how like men are one to another everywhere 
 and always. . . . 
 
 REV. H. P. LIDDON TO W. J. B. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL'S, ST. ED. H., OXFORD, 
 Dec. 6, 1862. 
 
 . . . Cartwright tells me that the question of your 
 election as Coadjutor Bishop with the right of succession is 
 very openly discussed in Toronto. Of course I did not tell 
 him that I had heard anything of the matter. He says 
 that there has been a "caucus" or informal meeting to deal 
 with the subject, and that the only difficulty is the want of 
 a fund which is to be raised. It appears that the present 
 Bishop of Toronto is paid by the Home Government, but that 
 his successors must throw themselves upon the local Church. 
 But he (C.) anticipates no difficulty on this score. There is 
 much speculation, he adds, as to whether or no you are likely 
 to accept the post. Probably all this or more is no news to 
 you or you have heard something from Eiddell. But Badgeley, 
 a Queen's man from Canada, tells me the same story. . . .
 
 106 THE PARISH 1864 
 
 W. J. B. TO KEY. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Dec. 19, 1864. 
 
 Do not think me a pest. I cannot help pressing once more 
 the extreme importance, as it seems to me, of a counter-move 
 to the Destructives. It is quite true that the religious party 
 may not be able to agree upon a scheme, but they are not, 
 as I think, called upon at present to do this. What is required 
 is to show a good face to the world, to make it understood 
 that there is at least a fair number of not unknown names 
 who think very differently from the first memorialists. Surely 
 this could be done. 
 
 I have great faith in protests. Their value comes out wonder- 
 fully in after times. The Sicilian Vespers came of a protest. 
 It is like rowing a losing race. Chances occur when they 
 are least looked for. And after all they are acts of honesty. 
 It is something to say liberavi animam meam. I am going 
 to write to Luard to this effect. The Times, somehow, evidently 
 does not go heartily with the Destructives, and I cannot help 
 thinking that they would be glad of a counter-demonstration. 
 Even Gladstone hinted that it would be well for the memorialists 
 to neutralise opposition by reasonable compromise. But if 
 there is no opposition, they will have it all their own way. 
 I think that I would rather have a compulsory than a permissive 
 bill. Do you not think that the increase of personal holiness 
 is some set off against other and adverse things 1 . . . 
 
 At this point it may not be out of place to give 
 a brief resum$ of the Vicar's methods of parish 
 work, principally related by himself in the " Parish 
 Journals " and elsewhere. 
 
 His custom of working out details upon a 
 broad foundation of principle may be fitly illus- 
 trated from the records of his parochial work 
 at Wantage, kept with scrupulous minuteness in 
 what he called " the White Books," as they were 
 bound in parchment. This parish diary begins on
 
 1847 PARISH RECORDS 107 
 
 August 4, 1847, and is preceded by details of the 
 census of 1821 in Wantage, by a list of " un- 
 baptized persons in the parish of Wantage being 
 more than three months old," and of persons living 
 in flagrant sin ; and a description of the " objects " 
 of the journal as " facts concerning the spiritual 
 and bodily welfare of the parishioners of Wantage, 
 observations on the cottages, wages, rents, marks 
 of progression, marks of retrogression, and the 
 like." Notes on the services occur frequently ; 
 and after a few years another series of books was 
 opened, with entries of every sermon preached in 
 the parish, with the text and the subject, each 
 entry being made by the preacher. 
 
 As early as January, 1848, we find that the 
 " communicant classes," on which the Vicar laid 
 such stress all through his parochial life, were already 
 organised. "Wednesday Young women to prepare 
 for H. C. ; Thursday Young men, and married 
 women ; Friday Young women ; Evening service ; 
 Married men." From that time forward, till he 
 left Wantage, he never omitted to take these classes 
 himself, except in the rare case of incapacitating 
 illness, and once a year when he was taking a 
 holiday. The numbers attending the classes grew 
 steadily, as the newly confirmed were drafted into 
 them, till, at the close of his ministry at Wantage, 
 he could write (in an article in the Literary Church- 
 man, afterwards reprinted as a small pamphlet) : 
 
 I have found it necessary in a country town to form no 
 less than twelve classes which are invariably in the week
 
 io8 THE PARISH 1847- 
 
 which precedes the first Sunday of every month, and before 
 the greater festivals. These classes vary greatly in size. The 
 smallest has eight names only, the largest forty-five. On the 
 whole the numbers, which at first were under thirty, have now 
 passed three hundred. A careful list is kept of absentees, who 
 are always specially visited and invited not to pass over the 
 next time. A few, as might be expected, slip through as years 
 flow on, sometimes from old age, or other reasonable causes ; 
 sometimes from idleness ; but the leakage is more than made up 
 for by those whom each Confirmation and close and continuous 
 parish sifting adds. 
 
 He continues with " a few words of caution," 
 which describe, in fact, his own practice for thirty 
 years. 
 
 (1) On no account should these classes be held in school-rooms, 
 parish-rooms, or aisles of the church, but in the parsonage itself. 
 It is of all importance to give them a friendly aspect, to take 
 away stiffness, and to make those who come feel themselves, 
 so to say, thoroughly at home. Chairs, not forms, should be 
 arranged comfortably and hospitably round the room, which 
 should also be well warmed and brightly lighted. (2) The 
 members of the classes, as each monthly week recurs, should 
 be re-visited and re-invited. General notices given in church 
 are of less than no value. Nor is it advisable to leave messages 
 with neighbours, for this too often gives opportunity for a 
 sneering remark, and breaks down the delicacy which should 
 characterise all that has, however remotely, to do with com- 
 munications on spiritual subjects. (3) The classes must on 
 no account be omitted. No call of pleasure or of family con- 
 venience, save perhaps once a year when a holiday is needed 
 for health, should be preferred to them. If once it is perceived 
 that the clergyman can put them aside for his own purposes, 
 the lesson will soon be learned by those who ought to attend. 
 In my opinion, all the success of communicant classes depends 
 simply on really hard work, which moreover will increase in 
 hardness as the thing takes root and grows. Much prayer, 
 much patience, much tact, and much perseverance are here 
 absolutely necessary. If a man is not prepared for this he had
 
 i88o COMMUNICANT CLASSES 109 
 
 better not attempt to gather them together. If, however, he 
 is not afraid of " spending and being spent," he will, unless in 
 very exceptional circumstances, find after a time that he has 
 established without show or fuss, in this bit of parochial 
 machinery, a most potent auxiliary in his campaign against evil. 
 
 A few more details may be given, for no idea 
 can be formed of his parochial life without realising 
 what an important place these classes took in it. 
 ' Class-week,' as it was always called, was a time 
 in which every fibre of his energetic nature was 
 strained almost beyond endurance, as those knew 
 who saw him at his hastily-snatched meal taken in 
 the short interval between two classes. But the 
 hardest week of the year, perhaps, was that in which 
 the Confirmation classes, which he always took him- 
 self, coincided with the Communicant class-week, so 
 that nearly every hour of the afternoon and evening 
 was spent in his study, one class succeeding another 
 with hardly any interval, till at some time after 
 nine o'clock he would appear, saying, " I am tired." 
 But he rose at six the next day- as usual, ready for 
 that work which was really his life. 
 
 He divided his Communicant classes into 
 
 (1) Young ladies, including the daughters of the upper trades- 
 people and the pupils of a young ladies' school ; (2) young men 
 (a) clerks and the better educated, (&) mechanics ; (3) young 
 married women and others, in two similar classes; (4) two 
 classes of elder married women, each at a different time, so 
 as to meet their convenience ; (5) a class of lads of the choir, 
 pupil teacher boys, and their compeers; (6) labourers; and 
 (7) pupil teacher girls and others connected with the girls' and 
 infant schools. Each of these classes has its own fixed hour, 
 which is seldom or never changed, so that they may arrange
 
 i io THE PARISH 1847- 
 
 their occupations of the week in accordance with it. According 
 to my experience the clergyman should always be ready to 
 receive the comers as his visitors, and to greet them as they 
 enter with a few kindly words to each which will not, I am 
 very sure, diminish the effect of the more serious work which 
 follows. The address which he should deliver, as I think, 
 standing, as they sit round his table would last generally from 
 thirty to forty minutes, and be rather of the conversational 
 than sermonising kind; given in homely yet earnest language, 
 brightened up sometimes with an appropriate anecdote or 
 mention of public events, or of something which has happened 
 lately in the parish, or which touches on the well-being of the 
 Church. . . . The whole should be concluded with prayer, that 
 of 'humble access' slightly altered, or some words arising 
 from the special subject which has been handled. After the 
 class is ended, I frequently ask any who require some indi- 
 vidual help to stay, and call them in separately; generally, 
 indeed, several of their own accord ask to be allowed to speak 
 to me. I need not point out of how great value this is. 
 
 After he left Wantage he still continued to hold 
 these classes which had formed part of his life for 
 so many years ; and at Worcester he enjoyed 
 gathering some of his poorer neighbours and his 
 servants into his study once a month to prepare 
 them for Communion ; while at Lincoln he held 
 classes for his own servants and those of some of 
 the adjoining families, as well as for the Cathedral 
 bell-ringers and workmen. His last classes were 
 held just three weeks before his death, in prepara- 
 tion for Christmas. 
 
 Another matter which from the first he regarded 
 as of primary importance, was the efficiency of the 
 schools, both as to teaching and fabric. Thus, 
 under January 31, 1848, we find entered: "Worked 
 at school all the morning. The first class (new)
 
 1880 NATIONAL SCHOOLS in 
 
 very promising. Great want of arrangement. The 
 lesser boys learn next to nothing." His invariable 
 custom was to visit the schools daily, and he or 
 one of the clerical staff always opened school with 
 the form of prayer which he compiled. In this con- 
 nexion may be mentioned the class which he held 
 for the girl pupil teachers every day immediately 
 after breakfast. All the school staff also assembled 
 in the study at 12.45 on Saturday, to report on the 
 week's work, so that he was in constant touch with 
 every detail of elementary education in the parish. 
 
 He was able also to compare the state of the 
 Wantage schools with that of the others in the 
 neighbourhood, when, in 1849, he became Inspector 
 under the Diocesan Board of Education, not only of 
 religious knowledge, but of the general instruction, 
 as well as of the fabric and arrangements. This 
 post he retained as long as he was Vicar of Want- 
 age. He enjoyed his round of inspections, and 
 would bring back additions to his stock of amusing 
 stories, such as : Scene A village school on " the 
 Downs." Question " Now, children, tell me the 
 name of an animal?" (Chorus) "Please, sir, a 
 cow." " Very good ; now tell me some fish." 
 Long pause at last a hand timidly lifted "Well?" 
 " Please, sir, a red herring." He also gained a 
 valuable insight into the conditions of Church work 
 in these lonely villages, and his desire to found an 
 educational Sisterhood must have been much stimu- 
 lated by what he saw of the school teachers during 
 his early years as Inspector.
 
 ii2 THE PARISH 1847- 
 
 One of his first efforts was to build suitable 
 schools, and on August 6, 1849, the corner-stone of 
 a school designed by Mr. Woodyer was laid by 
 Bishop Wilberforce. As the number of children in 
 the schools grew, other buildings were erected, but 
 so much care had been taken with the plans for the 
 first schools, that no structural improvement or altera- 
 tion was required by the Government Inspectors till the 
 famous "cloak-room and hat-peg" order of 1894. 
 
 We find that as early as 1848 he had perceived 
 the unsatisfactory results of the ordinary Sunday 
 school system : 
 
 Hitherto, he writes, the Sunday and Day schools have been 
 on entirely different principles, our Day school learners and 
 boys not attending any school, being all mingled together on 
 Sunday. This was of necessity at first. For there was no 
 school at all but the Sunday school, including among its 
 scholars most of those who now form our Day school. The 
 Day school then gradually attained its present size, viz. 120 
 on the books, with an average attendance of 106 or 7. These 
 numbers are perfectly manageable on week days by Mr. Hyde 
 the schoolmaster and three monitors. But on Sundays, 
 being mixt up with all the others, the numbers (about 180 
 or 90) cannot be controlled by twelve or fourteen teachers. 
 It seemed then advisable to take out of the Sunday school 
 the Day scholars, and leave the rest for the Sunday school 
 teachers to manage and instruct, collecting them in the 
 English school. And this was accordingly done with very 
 little difficulty. In church in the afternoon the numbers were 
 174, besides some 18 who came to the Vicarage, making 202 
 in all, boys under Church instruction. The two schools were 
 divided and under much better control. 
 
 The class of boys who came to the Vicarage con- 
 sisted of choir boys and tradesmen's sons ; and the
 
 i88o FOREIGN MISSIONS 113 
 
 Vicar never relinquished it till he left the parish. 
 The boys used to arrive about two, and remained till 
 the hour of afternoon service. They repeated the 
 Catechism, and some verses of Scripture (one boy 
 learnt all, or nearly all, St. John's Gospel by heart), 
 and after a little teaching, the Vicar told them a 
 story which he continued Sunday by Sunday for 
 months on end ; very often bringing in some of his 
 foreign experiences, and not infrequently losing the 
 thread of the tale during the week, which, however, 
 did not matter, as his pupils were always ready to 
 remind him of the exact point at which it had 
 been broken off. 
 
 He considered foreign missions to be an integral 
 part of the Church's work, and accordingly the 
 first missionary meeting was held at Wantage on 
 July 16, 1848, and thenceforward it became a yearly 
 event. He always tried to secure for these meetings 
 speakers who had had personal experience in the 
 mission field. Bishop Selwyn, Bishop Hills, Rev. 
 T. V. French, afterwards Bishop of Lahore ; Bishop 
 Gray of Capetown ; a black clergyman, Rev. J. 
 Duport, from the Pongas Mission ; a native of 
 Honolulu ; missionaries from India, Australia, Africa 
 visited Wantage year by year, and addressed 
 crowded audiences. A parochial association in con- 
 nection with S. P. G. was formed in 1862, under 
 the auspices of the late Bishop Christopher 
 Wordsworth, at that time vicar of Stanford in 
 the Vale, and a dear friend and neighbour. 
 
 Nor did William Butler's zeal for missions confine 
 
 H
 
 114 THE PARISH 1847- 
 
 itself to his parish. He travelled as "deputation" for 
 S. P. G. two or three times ; and when he was 
 living in Lincolnshire during the last years of his 
 life he often came across reminiscences of his visit 
 many years before. 
 
 He was instrumental in forming the " Special 
 Agency for Foreign Missions," of which he was chair- 
 man during the whole time of its existence, and 
 he acted as Commissary to Bishop Macrorie of 
 Maritzburg from 1868 to 1890. 
 
 To return to the parish. He laid great stress 
 on the ministry of preaching, and especially in- 
 sisted on method and order in this important 
 work. In Holy Week, 1849, a scheme of sermons 
 was arranged, followed a few years later by one for 
 the Lent services. His own practice was invariably 
 to choose his Sunday morning text from the Epistle 
 or Gospel for the week. On Sunday evenings in 
 the Trinity season he preached a kind of commentary 
 on various books of the Bible ; and in this manner 
 he expounded to his people, verse by verse, Isaiah, 
 Hosea, the Pastoral Epistles, the Revelation, etc. ; 
 not attempting to enter into critical questions, but 
 endeavouring to bring out the practical teaching 
 of Holy Writ. On Tuesday and Friday evenings 
 after service he gave what he called "lectures": 
 ten minutes of exposition and application of a pas- 
 sage usually taken from the first lesson just read. 
 Thus he instructed his congregation from the Bible, 
 while he observed the order prescribed by the Church. 
 His sermons were all carefully prepared, and often
 
 i88o PREACHING 115 
 
 written out fully, as were also the "meditations" 
 which he gave in the afternoon twice a week in Lent. 
 
 On one summer Sunday a wasp stung him in 
 the throat soon after he had entered the pulpit. 
 He continued his sermon with no outward sign of 
 discomfort, but after service mentioned the occurrence 
 in the vestry. " Please, sir, we saw it crawling 
 up you, and we thought it would sting you," 
 observed a chorister. No doubt the rustic mind 
 which loves anything of the nature of a practical 
 joke had hoped for a "scene" when the crisis came. 
 
 The " Parish Journal," under the date of Ascen- 
 sion Day, 1871, records an informal preaching. It 
 should be remembered that this was the preacher's 
 fourth sermon that day, the first having been 
 delivered at the 4 A.M. Celebration. 
 
 Coming home at night I found the iron bridge filled with 
 young men. This is a great evil. They make unpleasant 
 remarks, etc., to girls and others passing by. I spoke to them 
 about this; and as they did not seem inclined to move I 
 took out my Prayer-book, read the Gospel for Ascension Day, 
 and preached them a short sermon. This answered well. 
 I wished them good night, and as I entered my garden they 
 all walked away, responding to me in a very friendly tone. 
 
 In the matter of hours of service he tried as far 
 as possible to meet the needs and convenience of 
 all the parishioners. An intimate friend writes of 
 his first years at Wantage : 
 
 He laid down as a principle for himself in beginning his work 
 there, that he would not in any way alter the services which 
 he found in use then, viz. the Sunday Matins, and afternoon 
 (three o'clock) Evensong, and the monthly late Celebrations. He 
 was ready to odd on as many other services as he pleased as
 
 ii6 THE PARISH 1847- 
 
 time went on, but for many years those two Sunday services 
 went on unaltered, his object being to conciliate and satisfy 
 the " old inhabitants " who had got used to these services, and 
 would regard any other as innovations. 
 
 Seeing that it was practically impossible for the 
 labourers to come to church on Ascension Day and 
 New Year's Day at the ordinary hours, he began, 
 in 1849, a Celebration on Ascension Day at 4.45 A.M., 
 and finding after a few years' experience that even 
 this hour was too late, he fixed the service at 4, 
 and on New Year's Day at 4.30; and he was 
 rewarded by the large attendance of those on whose 
 behalf the effort had been made. He found, too, 
 that the practice of early Celebrations satisfied an 
 instinct of reverence. " I always likes to come leer " 
 (i.e. empty, fasting), said a sturdy yeoman farmer, 
 at one time an opponent, but afterwards a firm 
 supporter of the Vicar. 
 
 He did not consider reading the Lessons as a 
 matter of secondary importance. In a paper on 
 " Utterance " published in the Literary Cliurchman 
 for Nov. 15, 1889, he gave his matured views on 
 this subject. 
 
 As to the reading of the Lessons, let it be remembered that 
 as the prayers are the action of man speaking to God, so these, 
 looked at rightly, are nothing less than God speaking to man, 
 and the reader cannot be too strongly impressed with the 
 great seriousness and solemnity of that which he has in hand. 
 The book itself should be reverently handled as that in which 
 is contained the Word of God, the very name by which St. John 
 describes the Only Begotten Son. When the Lessons are con- 
 cluded it should be closed, in order to prevent dust or injury 
 happening to it, after the pattern of Him Who, after reading in
 
 i88o READING THE LESSONS 117 
 
 the synagogue at Nazareth from the Prophet Isaiah, "closed 
 the book and gave it again to the minister." The Lessons should 
 be read not mumblingly or hesitatingly, not noisily or roughly, 
 not emphatically or dramatically, not what is called impressively, 
 but quietly, thoughtfully, restrainedly, with just so much, and 
 no more, of emphasis as will enable the hearers readily to grasp 
 its meaning. . . . Again, it is very desirable that the clergy- 
 man, before reading any portion of Holy Scripture, should 
 study it in its original language Greek or Hebrew. In this 
 way not only will he appreciate far more thoroughly the meaning 
 of the passage, but he will be secured against mistakes some- 
 times of a very serious nature. 
 
 . "His reading," writes the friend previously quoted, "of the 
 Bible was very impressive, though exceedingly quiet. He had a 
 way of throwing up some word or sentence into a strong relief, 
 so that it impressed itself on one's mind and brought out new 
 meanings. I have often and often thought of one evening in the 
 Home chapel when the Lesson for the day was the one about 
 David's sin. I thought at the moment while he was reading it 
 that it was rather a distressing chapter to read to those girls. 
 He read it through quite evenly and quietly till he came to the 
 last verse. Then there was a little pause, and then slowly, and 
 with tremendous force of expression, he said, "But the thing that 
 David had done displeased the Lord." I have never forgotten 
 the impression he made it was worth a whole volume of 
 sermons." 
 
 He gained a thorough knowledge of the people 
 committed to his charge by assiduous visiting at 
 their houses, not omitting such Dissenters as were 
 willing to receive his visits. Thus he notes in 
 May, 1862: 
 
 Visited the . They are strong Baptists. They received 
 
 me in a very kind and friendly manner. I am sure that it is 
 quite worth while to cultivate people of this kind, for friendliness, 
 if it does not win them to the Church, yet disarms them for 
 open hostility; and it is impossible to say when the good 
 seed may be sown.
 
 Ii8 THE PARISH 1847- 
 
 On visiting in general, he writes in October, 1851: 
 
 Our only hope, humanly speaking, and considering the un- 
 popularity of the side which we advocate, is in gentleness, 
 resolution, demonstrative self-denial, and hard work in visiting. 
 This last, I think, we need to have imprest on us. To go out 
 at four o'clock, stay half-an-hour or longer pleasing ourselves 
 in some way, will not do. We must honestly and conscien- 
 tiously devote at least three and a half or four hours daily to 
 visiting work. Now is the time when harvest and fairs are 
 over and people are sick. Sickness too should be taken in a 
 business-like way. We should think what effect we intend to 
 produce on the person, and work to that. We should visit 
 always at the same time, so that the sick man may learn to 
 look for the visit. We should always pray with him. It is 
 very easy to lounge time away, which, if we were in Mr. 
 Hart's Foundry working as mechanics, we should not dare to do. 
 
 Another paper in the Literary Churchman sums 
 up his many years' experience : 
 
 Parochial visiting should be seriously accepted and taken 
 in hand as an integral portion of the duties of the parish 
 priest, and a definite portion of the week's hours should be 
 allotted to the carrying of it out. I cannot agree with those 
 superior beings who deliberately decline to visit, on the ground 
 that their parishioners ought to come to them. Rather it 
 seems to me that this is essentially one of the cases when 
 Mahomet should go to the mountain, and be thankful that 
 he has the chance of doing so. Nor, again, do I think those 
 wise who allege as a reason for not visiting their flock that 
 they have no "gift" for such as this, that they do not know 
 what to say, and the like. I am quite sure that they are 
 throwing away a very important chance, and that with a little 
 effort against their natural difficulties, such as most of us have 
 to make in regard to other things, and after a little experience 
 and a few mistakes, they will find that the " gift " will come. 
 The time given to such visiting is in no sense of the word 
 wasted time. Most true is the old saying, " A house-going 
 parson makes a church-going people." Nothing at all no fine 
 preaching, nor overflowing soup-kettle, nor system of assiduous
 
 i88o PAROCHIAL VISITING 119 
 
 "district visitors," brings the people to church like the regular 
 loving visit of the parson. What, moreover, like this enables 
 the minister to gain a real knowledge of his people's minds 
 and natures, their weaknesses and their strong points their 
 needs both of body and soul ? Surely everything of this kind 
 that he can learn respecting them is helpful not least even 
 their language, varying as it does so much in different parts 
 of England, and, as all know, so closely interwoven with their 
 mode of thought. . . . Parochial visiting to be really 
 effective must be carried out with a definite purpose and 
 object that object in few words being, like all the rest of a 
 minister's life and duties the winning of souls to Christ, and 
 the maintaining them in the right course. . . . The winning 
 of souls much resembles the taking of a city. Trenches must 
 be laid down, often far from the walls, gradually to approach 
 nearer and nearer, till the opportunity is found for entering. 
 Thus the minister never having lost sight of his real object, 
 viz. to do the work of Christ and "preach His gospel to 
 every creature," at least of those committed to his charge 
 must be contented often, it may be for many years, to talk 
 on general subjects as the health of the family; their worldly 
 condition and prospects ; events which have occurred in the 
 neighbourhood, whether public or private ; the garden, if there 
 be one; but, above all, as the topic most unfailing of interest 
 and most legitimate, the children their characters, their 
 progress at school, their present and their future. Such 
 subjects as these, kindly and sympathetically handled, will 
 break down barriers of shyness and reserve, and open the door 
 for more directly spiritual work. Confidence once thus kindled, 
 there will follow in the right time counsel as to private or 
 household prayer, encouragement to regular attendance at the 
 House of God, the importance of Holy Communion, the 
 best method of maintaining the Christian battle against the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil ; possibly also the meaning of 
 true Repentance for past or present sin, in its threefold 
 division of Contrition, Confession, and Satisfaction. ... As 
 to the time of visiting the afternoon hours are, on the 
 whole, the most convenient for all classes, especially for the 
 poor, whose cottage or lodgements necessarily require the 
 morning's ordering, before a visitor can be welcome. . . .
 
 120 THE PARISH 1847- 
 
 It has sometimes been found a good plan where the clergyman 
 is sufficiently well known and on thoroughly intimate terms to visit 
 in the early evening, that is, after the day's work is ended, 
 and before the elder portion of the family has retired to rest. 
 In this way, and often in no other, acquaintance may be made 
 with the men, who are necessarily for the most part absent 
 from their homes, and invisible or at least unapproachable 
 during the day. The writer of this paper, taking the idea 
 from the busy parochial life of Bishop Stanley of Norwich, 
 used occasionally, as it seemed to him with much advantage, 
 thus to visit some of his flock. At such times, in houses 
 where such a practice would be acceptable, it might be pro- 
 posed to read and explain some short passage of Holy 
 Scripture, and to say a few Collects taken from the Book 
 of Common Prayer. ... As much respect should be 
 shown to the poorest cottager as to the greatest peer. The 
 head should always be uncovered on entering the house, and a 
 chair should not be taken till offered. These may seem trifles, 
 but they may materially affect the position of the visitor in the 
 estimation of the visited. . . . Then, too, let the clergyman 
 be careful not to confine his visits to the poor, as though 
 they were a marked-off class, or as if he had no place in the 
 houses of others. All should be visited, rich, poor, tradesmen, 
 farmers, gentry, professional men, Dissenters, Church people, 
 friends, and even if he have any foes. Is he not the 
 minister of the whole parish 1 If he have any doubt as to 
 his welcome, if the very touch of the latch fill his mind as with 
 the anxiety of some difficult problem, at the thought of what 
 to say and do, let him offer a word of momentary prayer, and 
 he will never find this to fail. 
 
 It is astonishing what solid and definite work may thus 
 be done, far more than by sermons or by any merely general 
 teaching, how many difficulties may be explained, how many 
 stumbling-blocks removed, how much the tone of a parish 
 may be lifted, how much interest excited in the Church, how 
 the clergyman himself may win love and legitimate influence. 
 To this it may be added that nothing is more refreshing to 
 one who has the slightest love for souls than an afternoon 
 thus spent. The sense of being kindly welcomed and greeted, 
 the sense of knowledge gained of his people, the sense of
 
 i88o CLEANLINESS NEXT TO GODLINESS 121 
 
 duty accomplished, the sense of having distilled some good 
 and abiding teaching, the sense of having gained warm and 
 attached friends, all these combine to "reward sevenfold into 
 his own bosom " the man who, instead of wasting his hours 
 in lingering over a novel or newspaper by his fireside, or flirt- 
 ing at lawn tennis, or seeking what is called society, or even 
 following out congenial studies, visits steadily, prayerfully, 
 and laboriously that flock over which " the Holy Ghost has 
 made him overseer." 
 
 The deep interest in his people which these 
 extracts illustrate, caused him not to confine his 
 labours for them to spiritual concerns. As in most 
 old places, many of the cottages in Wantage were 
 hardly fit for human habitation, and those who 
 lived in them led lives not far above "the beasts 
 that perish." As early as 1849, the Vicar purchased 
 a batch of these cottages, pulled them down, replaced 
 them with properly built houses, and tenanted them 
 with respectable families. This he did on several 
 occasions, and some of the other Wantage residents 
 followed his example. Another matter which he 
 had much at heart was the health of the town. 
 He soon discovered that the systems of drainage and 
 of the water supply were highly unsatisfactory, as 
 was proved by frequent visitations of typhoid fever ; 
 and he went about with the town surveyor personally 
 investigating nuisances, and never resting till the 
 arm of the law was brought to bear upon them. 
 
 He did not overlook the value of thrift, and at 
 the beginning of 1859 he set on foot a penny bank, 
 which for many years he attended every Saturday 
 evening. He was astonished at the power of saving
 
 122 THE PARISH 1847- 
 
 out of their small earnings shown by the labouring 
 class as soon as the opportunity was put within 
 their reach. 
 
 He took part in such social festivities as the 
 annual dinners of the " clubs " or benefit societies ; 
 and from the beginning of the Volunteer movement 
 he attached himself to it, partly from his strong 
 sense of patriotism, and partly from his feeling of 
 responsibility as the representative of the Church 
 in the parish. Thus he writes on Oct. 16, 1873 : 
 
 The prizes of the Volunteers given away to-day. I was 
 asked to give them, and to join them afterwards at supper. 
 This I gladly did, because I am convinced that at this present 
 time it is of all importance for the clergy to assert and accept 
 their position as the ministers of the great national Church, 
 and therefore interested in all the concerns of the people 
 among whom they are. 
 
 Colonel Lord Wantage, V.C., with whom the 
 Vicar was closely associated as Chaplain to the 
 Berks Volunteers, has recorded his recollections of 
 him in his military capacity. 
 
 Among the Vicar of Wantage's many great qualities, were 
 some characteristic ones which especially endeared him to his 
 country neighbours and friends, outside his own parochial 
 domain. He had a spirit of uncompromising partisanship 
 which led him to throw himself heartily into the ranks of 
 those who were carrying out projects or movements which 
 coincided with his own convictions of what was good, right, 
 or patriotic. 
 
 Patriotism was indeed a marked feature of his singularly 
 manly character. He was an Englishman and a patriot to his 
 heart's core. The military instinct was strong within him, and 
 soldiers and everything connected with them appeared strongly 
 to his imagination and his sympathy. He saw clearly, and in
 
 i88o CHAPLAIN TO THE VOLUNTEERS 123 
 
 his addresses to soldiers brought out strongly the great qualities 
 requisite alike to make a good soldier and a good Christian. 
 
 The early stages and subsequent more complete development 
 of the Volunteer movement very precisely fell in with the 
 combative elements in his character. 
 
 The notion that England was to be left at the mercy of a 
 possible invading foe would put him into a state of hot 
 indignation, during which he would pour forth floods of 
 patriotic sentiments, sometimes almost unmeasured as coming 
 from a minister of peace. On these occasions he would give 
 expression to his confident opinion as to the necessity of 
 every Englishman being trained to arms for the defence of his 
 country, and of every child being taught the discipline of 
 drill. 
 
 It was not unnatural, taking into account these sentiments, 
 that he should throw himself heart and soul into active support 
 of the Volunteer movement, especially in his own county, and 
 he found a congenial spirit in his neighbour and attached 
 friend, Colonel Loyd Lindsay, who commanded the Kegiment 
 raised in the County of Berks. 
 
 The Vicar took great delight in being present in his capacity 
 of Regimental Chaplain during the week annually spent by 
 the Regiment in camp in various parts of the county. For 
 many years he continued to fill the duties of Chaplain, asso- 
 ciating freely with his military comrades, and exercising among 
 them an influence for good which must have left a deep mark 
 on many. He was always punctual to hold a short open-air 
 service at the close of the early morning drill. On Sundays 
 an early Celebration in a small tent specially arranged for the 
 purpose was followed by a full parade of the troops and an 
 open-air service. The spirit-stirring sermons he preached on 
 these occasions, sometimes standing on the ancient Tumuli of 
 Churn Down, or under the spreading oak trees of Berkshire 
 Forests, and once on the slopes of the Saxon burial hill at 
 Lockinge, with the troops drawn up in line, and the villagers 
 of Ardington and Lockinge grouped on the grass terraces of 
 the steep hill side are still vividly present to the minds of 
 his old comrades. 
 
 The special excellence of the "Wantage" Company, which 
 he regarded as peculiarly his own their prowess at the rifle
 
 124 THE PARISH 1847- 
 
 butts and their success in the "tug-of-war" were frequent 
 matters of exultation to him. 
 
 On Low Sunday it was, and is still, the custom of the 
 Wantage parishioners to give up the body of their church to 
 the Volunteers and Yeomanry of the district, while neighbour- 
 ing families interested in them found seats which the good 
 people of Wantage readily accorded them. On these occasions, 
 after a hearty service and an eloquent sermon from the Vicar, 
 a military parade was formed around the statue of King Alfred 
 in the market place, and the troops marched round the 
 town the band playing, and the Vicar in his Chaplain's 
 uniform marching in the forefront, his keen face lighted up 
 with martial ardour. 
 
 When the Vicar left the corps on taking up his duties at 
 Lincoln, his comrades of the Berkshire Regiment presented 
 him with a piece of plate, having words of respect and affection 
 engraved on it, which ever afterwards found an honoured 
 place on the sideboard at the Lincoln Deanery reminding him 
 doubtless of happy days and warm friendships. 
 
 This sketch of his methods in his parochial work 
 may be summed up by some extracts from the 
 " Parish Journal," written at the close of the years 
 1864, 1867, and 1876. 
 
 Summary, 1864. Lukewarmness is a great evil, which of 
 course brings with it inconsistency and carelessness. How 
 can they be met? Only, as I believe, by self-sacrifice, earnest 
 watchfulness, and readiness to take advantage of every opening 
 and opportunity. There is great danger lest we be satisfied 
 with interesting and drawing people to us without spiritualising 
 and Christianising them, lest we suffer them to rest satisfied 
 with mere decency and the minimum of service. We are set 
 among people naturally unholy, careless, unbelieving (in the 
 deeper sense of the word), that is, having no natural leanings 
 towards the unseen and the heavenly. Should not all our 
 thoughts be bent towards raising them 1 ^/iwv TO TroXirtvpa cv 
 ovpavois virapxeil Our visits should be regular, and with this 
 end before us, however far off we may seem to be from attaining
 
 i88o SUMMARIES I25 
 
 it. What is needed is a gentle pressure, the carefully con- 
 sidering of each soul's needs, and the moving it on gently in 
 that direction. Some need the very simplest elements, prayer, 
 decently regular attendance at church, and the like; others 
 should be stirred towards Holy Communion; others again to 
 daily service, or at least occasional but regular attendance on 
 week days; others again to higher things. Wherever there 
 is difficulty and where is there not in dealing with souls? 
 we should bring the case at evening before God, and pray 
 for help before entering into the house. The work should 
 be recognised as the real object of our lives, the reason why 
 God has made us, and not as a Trdpepyov to be taken up and 
 laid down at our pleasure. It should occupy our thoughts 
 and our hearts. 
 
 Summary, 1867. To rush forward would simply be to alienate 
 our best. We have to teach, give them a desire, and then to 
 act. Meanwhile, there is plenty of work to be done of the 
 more solid kind ; the poor to visit and lead onwards, the 
 children to teach to pray and to love the Church. Evening 
 visits, children called in and questioned and examined, regular 
 house-to-house work, the watching for a gleam of desire in 
 the hard and ungodly, earnest prayer for our people, pleading 
 for them with God, thinking over them individually and 
 collectively, daily attendance on the sick; there is in all these 
 enough, and more than enough, to occupy and satisfy one. 
 Nothing but this kind of solid service will keep this parish 
 up to the mark. Our people are not enthusiastic, but they 
 have, nevertheless, certain principles, admitted truths, on which 
 we may build, and for which we should carefully and discrim- 
 inately look. May God grant us all a true spirit of love of 
 souls, and that readiness to give up all for the sake of those 
 souls for whom Jesus died, without which no ministry can ever 
 be otherwise than "as sounding brass or as a tinkling cymbal." 
 Summary, 1876. Our work then lies before us: steady, 
 persistent visiting, gaining a thorough knowledge of our people, 
 and bringing them to know us and our motives and ends; 
 earnest thought-out sermons and instructions in Church of every 
 variety; inculcation of Christian duties, especially of private 
 prayer and Holy Communion; watchfulness over our children, to 
 see that they are taught why they are (1) Christians, (2) Church-
 
 126 THE PARISH 1876 
 
 men ; trying by all legitimate means to win Dissenters and the 
 careless, of whom, alas! we have very many among us; preparing 
 bright attractive services ; readiness at all times and at all 
 costs to devote and sacrifice our time, our means, and all that 
 we have for the sake of those to whom we are sent. Nothing 
 short of all this will be strong enough to resist the atmosphere 
 of evil and indifferentism, of ignorance and perverseness. May 
 God grant to us all the strength and grace which we need !
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE SISTERHOOD. 
 
 A BREAK must now be made in the narrative of 
 the parochial work at Wantage to tell the story of 
 the Sisterhood, which, starting from small beginnings 
 and under great discouragement, was destined to 
 claim a large share of William Butler's life and 
 interests. His indomitable energy and perseverance 
 which refused to acknowledge defeat so long as 
 something remained worth fighting for, carried him 
 through difficulties and opposition which would 
 have cowed a weaker man. The history of his 
 forty-five years connexion with the Community is 
 closely interwoven with his life and work as a 
 parish priest. 
 
 As early as 1839 NewTnan, Keble, Pusey, and 
 Hook were corresponding on the possibility of 
 establishing societies of Soeurs de Charite. It was 
 not, however, till 1845 that the first trial was made 
 by the establishment of Dr. Pusey 's Sisterhood in 
 Park Village, Regent's Park. 1 About three years 
 
 1 See Life of Dr. Pusey, vol. iii., p. 23, et seq.
 
 128 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 later Miss Sellon's response to the Bishop of Exeter's 
 appeal for workers amongst the poor in Plymouth 
 resulted in the establishment of a Sisterhood to 
 carry on the works of mercy in that town. 
 
 The events which led to an attempt at founding 
 a Sisterhood at Wantage were nearly coincident with 
 those which led to the founding of Miss Sellon's 
 Community. 
 
 When William Butler entered upon his parochial 
 work in Wantage early in 1847, he had already 
 conceived in his mind a plan for organising a 
 Sisterhood, which should not only be a handmaid 
 to him in the work of female education in his 
 parish, and in visiting the sick and poor, but 
 should ultimately train Sisters to go out two and 
 two into the villages as school teachers, and so 
 provide for the better education of the poor in rural 
 districts. He foresaw that the battle of the Church 
 would be fought in the schools, and having been 
 struck by the isolated condition of the village 
 teachers, and by their lack of a high standard, he 
 desired to set on foot a scheme to raise their 
 tone, brighten their lives, and increase their useful- 
 ness as Church workers. 
 
 Ere long he thought he saw a realisation of his 
 hopes. Archdeacon Manning was anxious to find 
 work for a friend of his, Elizabeth Crawford Lock- 
 hart, 1 who had sustained the great grief and shock 
 of seeing her brother and step-mother join the 
 Church of Rome, but who, under the influence of 
 
 1 Cousin to John Gibson Lockhart.
 
 1894 SETTING TO WORK 129 
 
 Manning, was at that time kept loyal herself to 
 the Church of England. 
 
 Miss Lockhart was a woman of no ordinary 
 character, and her cultivated mind and holy life 
 endeared her to her friends, among whom she 
 reckoned the Kebles and Dysons. This led Manning 
 to speak of her to Mr. Butler, who sent her an invi- 
 tation to Wantage early in 1848. She spent the 
 Lent of that year at the Vicarage, and soon became a 
 loved and trusted friend of the Vicar and his family. 
 
 The Vicar and Miss Lockhart, both being eager 
 to set the work on foot without loss of time, allowed 
 no difficulties to stand in their way. As no house 
 was available, two cottages were taken, and soon 
 after Easter the nucleus of the present Sisterhood 
 was formed. The household at first consisted of Miss 
 Lockhart, who was the Mother Superior, and Miss 
 Mary Reid, who had been for some years connected 
 with the Lockharts as mistress of a small school 
 established by them at Chichester, and besides these, 
 two young girls who were to make themselves 
 useful in the house, and to be trained to take part 
 in the work with the possibility of some day 
 becoming Sisters. The arrangements of the little 
 household were of the simplest and most inexpensive 
 kind. The help of friends on visits was gladly 
 welcomed, and one who in those early days was 
 frequently there gives details of their life : 
 
 One of the cottages had been inhabited before by a working 
 shoemaker, and my bedroom was the room in which the cobbler 
 sat and worked ; it was on the ground floor, very little above 
 
 I
 
 130 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 the street, and I could hear the passers-by and the old watch- 
 man who used then to patrol the streets crying the hour of 
 the night. The oratory was upstairs, a little blue-washed 
 place with sloping roof and roughly-boarded floor ; the only 
 furniture consisted of two long desks with sloping sides made 
 of bare deal, at which we stood to say the Offices. There was 
 room for three or four at the outside to stand on either side. 
 Here sometimes the Vicar would come to join in one Office or 
 another, or occasionally to give us a few words of exhortation. 
 
 Such notices as "Lauds with the Sisterhood to 
 6," " Lauds and Terce with the Sisterhood, and 
 addressed them on their first beginning. May He 
 ever help them and prosper their work," " With 
 Mr. Keble to Prime at the Sisterhood," are of 
 frequent occurrence in the " Parish Journal " during 
 his first years at Wantage. Here also came Arch- 
 deacon Manning from time to time. 
 
 The National schools were not then built, and 
 the girls' school was carried on in two cottages 
 which were adapted for the purpose. Here Miss 
 Lockhart and her staff taught daily. School began 
 at nine A.M., then all went to church for matins 
 at ten, and back to school till twelve, and again 
 in the afternoon from two to four. Some visiting 
 was also done by the Sisters among the sick poor. 
 Towards the end of 1848 the little household moved 
 into a larger and more commodious cottage. In 
 February 1849 they were joined by Harriet Day : 
 she was sent by Mr. Henry Wilberforce to make 
 trial of the life and work in the newly formed 
 Community. Later on came Charlotte Gilbert, a 
 servant maid, the daughter of a labourer. These
 
 1894 A RETROSPECT 131 
 
 two only among the earliest members of the Society 
 ended their days as Sisters of the Community. 
 
 In an address delivered to the Sisters in 1873 
 the Vicar referred to these early beginnings. 
 
 It is now twenty-five years since I was first consulted, 
 young as I was, and unworthy as I was and have been ever 
 since, as to the practicability of forming a Sisterhood to work 
 among the poor of the parish of Wantage. There was then 
 but one other Sisterhood in existence in the Church of England, 
 and I differed from others, much more worthy than myself, 
 who feared the effect of such an experiment in the unprepared 
 state of the minds of the people in general for such a step, 
 and with the help of the noble and gifted woman who deter- 
 mined to devote her life and her means to the work, this 
 Community was begun. How from that time it has been 
 carried on, and at the cost of what anxiety, with what 
 earnest prayer, with what hopes and fears, only myself and 
 one other know. 
 
 It is with deep thankfulness that I look at what we are 
 now and think of the trembling beginning of that work which 
 I cannot doubt God has indeed blessed. The distinguishing 
 characteristic of this Society from the first has been simplicity. 
 Our object at the beginning was to gather together those 
 who would be content with a frugal life, patient toil, quiet 
 appearance, content with yielding themselves in simple-hearted 
 devotion to spend and be spent for their Master and their 
 Lord, I repeat, great simplicity in dress, and, if I may use 
 the word, in ritual : hard work and little show has ever been 
 the mark of this Community. Does this seem a poor and 
 unsatisfactory sort of aim 1 Surely not ! if we consider Him 
 Who was "the lowly" as well as the "undefiled One." Is not 
 the Hidden Life the ideal of the true Sister, and where can 
 she find it sooner than in extreme simplicity, a quiet exterior, 
 and in deep humility. 
 
 But though the first beginnings were so happy 
 and peaceful it was not long before the hope of
 
 132 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 founding an Educational Order was destined to 
 receive its first rude shock. 
 
 In order to understand how penitentiary came 
 to take the place of educational work in the early 
 days of the Community it will be necessary to 
 recall the state of the English Church fifty years 
 ago. 
 
 As the standard of holy living was raised by the 
 inculcation of sound doctrine, and the note of 
 penitence was emphasised as one of the essential 
 marks of a sanctified life, the desire was awakened 
 in the hearts of many to extend a helping hand 'to 
 that class of sinners, who, often more sinned 
 against than sinning, are looked upon as the out- 
 casts of society. The Church of Rome and the 
 Protestant bodies on the Continent had long estab- 
 lished homes for the reception of fallen women, 
 and these had been valued as a means whereby 
 many weary and heavy laden souls had been re- 
 claimed from a course of sin and misery and led 
 into paths of peace; but until 1848 the Church of 
 England had not borne witness against the sin of 
 impurity or extended the hand of compassion to 
 those desirous to return from their evil ways by 
 raising up for their reception homes in which the 
 work undertaken should bear a distinctly spiritual 
 stamp. The Rev. John Armstrong (afterwards 
 Bishop of Grahamstown) is justly regarded as the 
 originator of the Church Penitentiary movement, 
 and he was instrumental in arousing the conscience 
 of a large number of Churchmen to the duty of
 
 1894 CHURCH PENITENTIARY WORK 133 
 
 caring for these poor neglected outcasts. But apart 
 from any direct connexion with Mr. Armstrong, 
 two Church Penitentiaries came into existence about 
 the same time. The first of these was opened by 
 Mrs. Tennant at Clewer on St. Peter's Day, 1849, 
 the other a few months later at Wantage. Miss 
 Lockhart had been only a short time at work in 
 the parish schools, when probably influenced by 
 Manning, she conceived herself called to the work 
 of rescuing the fallen. This change of purpose, 
 involving as it apparently did, failure of his care- 
 fully thought-out scheme for an educational Order, 
 naturally was the cause of no small disappointment 
 to William Butler. He expressed his feelings in 
 letters to Archdeacon Manning, who rejoined : 
 
 LAVINGTON, Sept. 25, 1848. 
 
 I have been most sincerely grieved at the thought of having 
 grieved you. And I hardly know what to write. It was 
 thought right towards you that such an idea should not be 
 entertained without your knowledge. And the effect of this 
 communication is no more than to prevent a sudden mis- 
 understanding hereafter, if the day should ever come. I say 
 this, because clearly as I seem to see the work and the way, 
 of which Miss Lockhart has spoken to you, as falling within 
 the will of God, yet I have so deep a sense of the duty not 
 to change any work without overbearing reasons, and of the 
 singular awfulness of the work she referred to, that I think 
 my life (no certain one) may probably drop before it becomes 
 a practical question : and if I live, so long a time may elapse 
 before it could be attempted, that I think Miss Lockhart's stay 
 at Wantage as permanent as your incumbency. I don't say 
 that it might not end during your incumbency, but your 
 incumbency may end during her stay. Therefore I do not see 
 that you need be disquieted.
 
 134 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 He wrote a little later : 
 
 LAVINGTON, Oct. 13, 1848. 
 
 I have been called away to London, and got home only last 
 night, or your letter should have been answered sooner. 
 
 I thank you for it very sincerely. It takes from me a fear 
 and a pain I could not but feel. Though I never for a 
 moment doubted the perfect right and fitness, by the rule of 
 nature and of the spirit of our correspondence, yet I felt that 
 nothing short of a high submission of will, an abnegatio sui 
 tertii gradtis would suffice to keep from between us a feeling 
 [of] grief arising from contrariety of will. But your letter 
 sets me at rest for ever : and I feel sure that with such a 
 discipline of self, even such a loss as I trust you may not incur, 
 would turn into blessing to your flock and to your own soul. 
 
 While the diversion of Miss Lockhart's energy 
 to penitentiary work was still pending, the Vicar, 
 writing to Mr. Keble, refers to the Sisters' work 
 during the first year of their residence in Wantage. 
 
 I wanted also to talk to you about our Sisterhood here, 
 which has, by the blessing of God, sped so fairly. It is 
 exercising daily more influence on our people; and as a washer- 
 woman said to me the other day, "It makes one ashamed 
 of oneself to see Miss L." All classes take to it. But as 
 I think you know, I shall lose a great mainstay, Miss L., 
 for the Penitentiary, and with her at least two will swarm 
 off, leaving, in fact, Miss A. alone. Two or three will, how- 
 ever, I expect, join us; but it is most needful to preserve 
 continuity, and I am very anxious to keep Miss A. as head 
 of a future Home. 
 
 On July 22, 1849 (St. Mary Magdalene's Day), 
 the Vicar thus addressed the Sisters : 
 
 Dear Sisters, a year has now passed since first we met to 
 set apart, as far as in us lay, this house, and you who were 
 about to dwell here, to the service of Almighty God.
 
 1894 HOME FOR PENITENTS OPENED 135 
 
 It seems but yesterday since we knelt here together, and 
 yet these twelve months have been able strangely to change 
 the whole current of your lives. You feel yourselves distinctly 
 set apart I who address you feel it. Others little used to 
 look with a discerning or even friendly eye on the higher 
 aimings of the Christian life, feel it and own it also. Your 
 life has now assumed, so to say, a permanent mould. The 
 Religious Life, to use a technical phrase, has become your 
 natural life. The ways of the world : secular arrangements, 
 times, studies, society, things not out of place, nor wrong, 
 would now seem strange and jarring to you. Religious order, 
 regular hours of devotion, the weekly Celebration, involving 
 a daily preparation of a more or less formal kind, seasons 
 of silence, penitence ; sorrowing, rejoicing, as the Church 
 appoints, with Christ have now wound themselves round 
 your very being, edifying and sustaining your souls. 
 
 This feeling of sanctification is exactly that which was 
 needed to enable us to strike root downwards for the present, 
 and by God's blessing hereafter to bear fruit upwards. 
 
 After some months of consideration, it was de- 
 cided, with the approval and concurrence of the 
 Vicar, that a Home for penitents, with Miss Lock- 
 hart as its head, should be opened at Wantage, 
 under the direction of Archdeacon Manning, and 
 with the Rev. T. Vincent, who was working as 
 curate in the parish, as chaplain. 
 
 On a bright winter's morning, Feb. 2, 1850, 
 four priests, four Sisters, and a few friends met 
 together to dedicate the first penitentiary work 
 undertaken by Sisters in the Church of England 
 since the Reformation. The event is briefly recorded 
 in the " Parish Journal." 
 
 Feb. 2, Purification of the B. V. M. 
 
 The house in Newbury Street was opened with a Celebration. 
 Vincent arranged the chapel. Three sisters, two assistant
 
 136 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 friends, two penitents were present at the Celebration, together 
 with the Archdeacon, H. W., 1 Vincent, and myself. Before 
 the Celebration I said the benediction from the Kituale for 
 the house. 
 
 The service was most thrilling, and one could not but rest 
 in faith that God's blessing is on the work. In the evening 
 the Archdeacon addressed the "Familia." 
 
 Miss Lockhart wrote a fuller account of the 
 ceremony to a friend. 
 
 PENITENTS' HOME, Feb. 6, 1850. 
 
 You will have heard from Mrs. Pretyman of the safe arrival 
 of her beautiful scrolls, and the actual beginning of our 
 work. I should like you to have been with us on that morning, 
 nothing could have looked more solemn and bright withal 
 than our little chapel. The altar, with its pure white frontal, 
 ornamented only with five gold crosses, candlesticks and altar- 
 plate really befitting an altar, and between the candlesticks and 
 a three-branched light in the centre four vases, very beautiful 
 in themselves, filled with white camellias, and a wreath of 
 flowers resting upon the window-sill above. 
 
 We had four priests, the Father Director, Vicar, Chaplain, 
 and H. Wilberforce. The Vicar said the Office for Blessing 
 the House, and then the Archdeacon celebrated, the women 
 being allowed to be present on this occasion. They are not 
 to be so generally, as the Archdeacon does not think it safe 
 for them until they are better prepared. In the evening he 
 preached as nobody but he can, to the whole household, 
 
 dear , who has permission to come to our Offices, being 
 
 also present. 
 
 On Sunday he celebrated again at eight o'clock, and 
 preached for the Vicar's schools at church in the morning, 
 H. Wilberforce officiating for us, and before evening service 
 he spoke to the Penitents alone in the chapel, and after it 
 to us. I was sorry there were but two yet come, E. G., and 
 M., the workhouse girl; two others have come since and we 
 are keeping the remaining places for E. Ryle's pupils who 
 are now in hospital, and are to come as soon as they are 
 
 1 Rev. Henry Wilberforce, vicar of East Farleigh.
 
 1894 A HEAVY BLOW 137 
 
 well enough. We are still in much confusion, but hope by 
 next week to be quite settled ; the two houses make it 
 much more difficult to arrange things in a regular orderly 
 way. Charlotte Gilbert, the probationary lay Sister, 1 is very 
 useful. . I like her much, and hope she may like the life well 
 enough to stay with us. ... I have always forgotten to say 
 to you that we are by no means in a condition as you seemed 
 to think not to want help. The resources our Father Director 
 counts so touchingly upon are neither more nor less than the 
 alms of the faithful, which he feels sure will never fail us if 
 God indeed prospers our work. We have enough to support 
 ourselves and six penitents, but about 200 a year will be 
 wanted for rent, chaplain's salary, etc., so if you know any 
 one who would like to help us either by giving or collecting, 
 we shall receive it thankfully, so that it be not given by 
 constraint, but for the love of God and of His lost sheep, and 
 of course the larger our funds the greater will be our power 
 of enlarging our limits. 
 
 Hardly however had this new work been fairly 
 started when the attractive power of Rome proved 
 too much for the Superior, and before three months 
 had elapsed the following entry appears in the 
 " Parish Journal." 
 
 April 17. Archdeacon Manning came. Much interesting 
 though sad talk with him. I fear much trouble here from 
 one quarter. May God in His mercy avert it and soften the 
 blow. 
 
 The tidings of this great trouble, after the blow 
 had fallen, were sent to Mr. Keble. 
 
 1 Charlotte Gilbert was the only lay Sister of the Community. As 
 time went on Mr. Butler found the problems which presented them- 
 selves in classifying the members drawn from various social grades, 
 into Choir and Lay Sisters, to be so great that he resolved after 
 much careful consideration and consultation with those who had 
 practical experience of the difficulty, to have only one social grade 
 within the Order which he founded. This is one of the dis- 
 tinguishing notes of the Order of St. Mary the Virgin of Wantage.
 
 138 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 [July, 1850.] 
 
 I am ashamed to trouble you, but you will, I know, be 
 interested in the sad news that Miss L. has finally determined 
 on leaving us, and that this day she will join her brother. We 
 have done what we could in some ways for her, but the strong 
 draw towards Rome, together with the undermining support 
 of her spiritual counsellors, shivered all my attempts to pieces. 
 Now we are in much trouble to keep the work up ; we have 
 no one on whom we can rest, indeed, the household is a body 
 without a backbone, just standing up and no more. The Bishop 
 kindly offers to do all he can for us. But he is overwrought 
 with so many things. And my hands are indeed so over- 
 loaded that I can [hardly] keep what is on them already. 
 Vincent holds up nobly. Can you find anyone for us ? We 
 are not at present in want of money, for the heaviest and 
 main expenses are frankt to the end of the year. But the 
 anxiety is boundless. 
 
 What is doing in the Church? Are men failing, or why is 
 the great meeting put off? 1 It is very depressing to us at a 
 distance. 
 
 The calamity which had befallen the infant 
 Community did not stop here. Sister Mary quickly 
 followed her friend and Superior. Henry Wilberforce, 
 too, had seceded to Eome. Would the step he had 
 taken affect the two Sister Harriet and Sister 
 Charlotte who remained, and who had been sent 
 to Wantage by him? This was naturally the thought 
 uppermost in the mind of the Vicar, and he resolved 
 to throw himself into the breach and try to hold 
 the position. 
 
 Sister Harriet was a woman of a remarkably shy 
 and retiring character, and up to this time had 
 come little into personal contact with the Vicar, 
 
 1 To protest against the Gorham judgement. Life of Dr. Pusey> 
 vol. iii., chap. x.
 
 1894 A FAITHFUL REMNANT 139 
 
 and indeed stood so much in awe of him, that 
 when he came to the house she used to contrive 
 some errand amongst her poor people to take her 
 out. But now, if the work was to be carried 
 through, it was to her that he must look at least 
 for temporary help in this crisis. She had been 
 converted from Socinianism by Henry Wilberforce, 
 and felt she owed to him her very soul. Surely 
 the step he had taken must be right, and she 
 would follow him and her friend Miss Lockhart, 
 to whom she had deeply attached herself, into the 
 Church of Rome. Thus she argued, but the Vicar 
 would not let her go without seeking to convince 
 her in calmer moments of her error, and to retain 
 her in the English Church. He invited her to stay 
 at the vicarage ; while there he not only instructed 
 her daily as to the position of the Church of her 
 baptism, but gradually gained the deep affection 
 of her nature, and the visit was the beginning of a 
 friendship which strengthened as the years went on. 
 
 Bishop Wilberforce, to whose fatherly advice 
 William Butler had looked from the earliest begin- 
 nings of the Community, at this juncture proved a 
 most kind and helpful friend. He took an early oppor- 
 tunity of visiting the house, and at his suggestion 
 various modifications were effected. 
 
 From this time till 1854 the Sisters worked on 
 under the superintendence of the Vicar without 
 formally appointing a Superior. With William 
 Butler as their spiritual guide, the little band of 
 Sisters caught the spirit of singleness of purpose
 
 140 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 which he strove to instil into them. In spite of 
 all difficulties and disappointments the Vicar was 
 able to look even hopefully forward, and to write 
 cheerfully to Mr. Keble at the beginning of the 
 New Year: 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Jan. 9, 1851. 
 
 Many happy New Years to you and yours and all at Hursley. 
 It seems strange to write so blithely in this day of sorrow, 
 but I think in spite of all there was no harm in wishing 
 and even hoping. . . . Miss Hedger (Sister Catherine) deserves 
 great consideration, for she came here in the hour of our need 
 without having any kind of acquaintance with us or our work, 
 merely invited by a mutual friend. She has now given up 
 home and sisters, after a bitter struggle, to uphold our Home, 
 and is moreover able and discreet. Things have prospered 
 under her care beyond our hopes. ... It would be an exceeding 
 pleasure to us to show you "the Home." You know that 
 Miss Ashington is likely to come here again as a permanent 
 sister; she talks of coming on the 20th or 21st. 
 
 Philip Pusey is staying with us, as merry and funny as a 
 kitten. . . . 
 
 A few months later he wrote : 
 
 We are all very strong and hearty. In the Home are eleven 
 penitents and five Sisters, and we just keep about 120 
 between us and jail. 
 
 Slowly, and yet always steadily, the work grew 
 and developed under exceptionally difficult circum- 
 stances. As more applications were made for 
 admission to the Penitentiary, increased accommoda- 
 tion was obtained by turning lofts into garrets, and 
 out-houses into laundry and work-rooms, and finally, 
 by building a temporary chapel. So short-handed 
 were the Sisters at times that on two occasions 
 they turned to the Clewer Sisterhood for help, and
 
 1894 WORK AT THE HOME 141 
 
 their appeal was generously responded to by that 
 Community. 
 
 There was much which gave encouragement to 
 the workers. Some of those gathered into the 
 Home caught the fire of love for souls and sought 
 to reclaim others. In 1851 a penitent was dying 
 of consumption. Her constant prayer for nearly a 
 year was that a sister, whom she knew to be living 
 a life of sin, might be led to repentance. As each 
 new-comer was admitted, she eagerly inquired her 
 name. After many disappointments the poor sufferer 
 had at length the happiness of welcoming the sister 
 for whose salvation she had so earnestly supplicated. 
 The other had heard of her dying condition and 
 had walked all the way from Bristol to see her. 
 When she knocked at the door she had neither 
 knowledge of, or desire for, repentance. Her visit 
 ended in her remaining and attending on her sister 
 during the last weeks of her life, and the one 
 who had learned penitent love taught with failing 
 breath the love of the Saviour who had died for 
 sinners. 
 
 One other incident bears testimony to the same 
 earnest zeal on the part of the penitents. One of 
 their number was unsettled and resolved on leaving 
 the Home. Three others banded together to win 
 her by their prayers to remain. They asked per- 
 mission to be allowed to spend a day in fasting 
 and prayer in behalf of their companion. This was 
 not allowed them, but the chaplain, having spoken 
 to them collectively and ascertained that all desired
 
 142 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 to help her, consented to their giving up their 
 breakfast and spending their time in devotion 
 which he himself conducted. Before the day closed 
 they had the joy of having their companion among 
 them, willing and anxious to remain. 
 
 As the work developed the fact became more 
 and more apparent that a duly appointed head was 
 needed for the well-being of the Community, and 
 William Butler's clear judgement and discernment of 
 character led him to see in Sister Harriet, whose 
 retiring and shy nature made her known to few, the 
 one to whom under his care and guidance he could 
 trust the ruling of the Sisterhood. In the " Parish 
 Journal," February 21, 1854, he notes : 
 
 The Bishop went in the morning to the Home and there 
 instituted Sister Harriet. This seems a most important step, 
 and probably she is the first ecclesiastically appointed Superior 
 in an English house of this kind since the Reformation. 
 
 After her death in Jan. 1892, he thus described 
 her character to the Sisters : 
 
 Hers was indeed a life of faith. It was no light thing 
 in those early days to go forth like Abraham "not knowing 
 whither he went," trusting to the call of God, certain that 
 where He called it would be right to follow; so it was she 
 came to Wantage. She was always the same timid, diffident, 
 yet full of simple faith. Humility, simplicity, faith, love, 
 were the characteristics of her whole being. . . . Her 
 singularly truthful and quick nature made her thoroughly 
 grasp and rejoice in the teaching of the Sacramental doctrines 
 of the Church, and she remained, in spite of all temptations 
 and difficulties, firm and faithful to the Branch of Christ's 
 Church established in our land. 
 
 So diffident was she and retiring, that for a long time it 
 seemed impossible that she should hold a position of respon-
 
 1894 FOUNDATION STONE LAID 143 
 
 sibility and direction of others, but in answer to many prayers 
 she was pointed out as the future Mother of the Community. 
 ... It was indeed mainly owing to her singleness of mind, 
 combined with much firmness of purpose, that the Community 
 was enabled to face the difficulties of its earlier years. 
 Scarcely ever did her judgement fail, whether of persons or of 
 things. It was quite impossible to know her intimately without 
 loving and admiring her. And certainly nothing has done 
 more than her loyalty to the teaching of the Church to 
 impress upon the Community that character of sober obedience 
 which I trust it will never abandon. 
 
 And now the work to which he had so faithfully 
 clung when those who were its originators had 
 failed seemed fairly to have taken root. Before 
 the close of 1854 William Butler was eager in his 
 desire that the Community should have a per- 
 manent home ; this could only be suitably effected 
 by building. By July 25 of the following year 
 matters were sufficiently in train for the founda- 
 tion stone of the present St. Mary's Home to 
 be laid. 
 
 The day began with a storm of rain which, however, cleared 
 off" by one, when the Bishop, accompanied by the Archdeacon 
 of Berks, Dr. Wordsworth, Milman, Barff, Thirlwell, Trinder, 
 Du Pre, Houblon, Cranmer, G. Sawyer, Smith, and the clergy 
 of the parish, proceeded to lay the corner stone of the new 
 St. Mary's Home, on the ground purchased from W. Dixon, 
 at the top of Mill Street. The service was adapted from 
 that used on a similar occasion at Clewer, and the choir sang 
 it extremely well. Many of the farmers and others were 
 present from the market, and a goodly attendance of our 
 Church folk. Altogether the whole service was very satis- 
 factory and cheering. May God prosper the work. . . . The 
 Bishop addrest the workmen especially, and very much to 
 the purpose, on the duties and blessedness of labouring in 
 such a work.
 
 144 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 September 15th, 1856. The new St. Mary's Home entered. 
 September 19th, 1856. Service at the Home on entering 
 and using the (temporary) chapel for the first time. 
 
 An address to the Sisters given about this time 
 reviews the work of the first eight years, and shows 
 the spirit in which the foundations of the Order 
 were laid. 
 
 We have now, by the mercy of God, all but completed the 
 eighth year of our existence as a society. The history of our 
 fortunes and trials, the hopes and fears, the difficulties and 
 the marvellous reliefs, the encouragements and mercies, of 
 that octave of years, would indeed take long to tell. 
 
 When I look back to our small beginning, when I think 
 of the fearful shock which, in its tender growth, our society 
 received ; when I consider the just suspicion which then lighted 
 upon us; the difficulty, nay, as it seemed almost impossibility 
 of supporting even the three or four penitents and the three 
 Sisters engaged in their education ; our fruitless endeavours 
 to find any one to whom we could fitly confide the charge 
 of the household, and our total inexperience in this kind of 
 work, I do indeed bless God for the bountifulness with 
 which He has heard our prayers, and supplied us with exactly 
 the help we needed, and granted us so much absolute success. 
 Especially, my Sisters, I would thank Him that while He 
 has given us what we needed, He has never given us more. 
 . . . Very wholesome then for us is this our simple unadorned 
 and formless household. We may indeed be thankful that 
 we see not our reward. It must be good for us, it is like 
 our Lord Jesus Himself. And, believe me, we need not 
 fear "Fear not, little flock," it is His own gracious word. 
 The " little one " in God's good time shall become a thousand ! 
 . . . Let us indeed see that it is no lower motive than the 
 love of Jesus which constrains us. ... Thus shall you have 
 that peace which He alone can give. . . . The Lord Him- 
 self shall be your inheritance and your lot. He shall dwell 
 with you and make His blessed presence in all its warmth 
 and light, its grace and truth, its perfection of holiness felt 
 and recognised. And in his own good time perfecting, estab-
 
 1894 ELEMENTARY EDUCATION 145 
 
 lishing, strengthening, settling you. He shall give you the 
 consolation of a manifold blessing. Yea ! the Lord shall in- 
 crease you more and more, you and your children. 1 
 
 But while the Vicar was thus guiding the Peni- 
 tentiary work under the Sisters' care, his original 
 wish of establishing an educational Order had lost 
 none of its fervour. When the Sisters in 1850 
 moved into a larger house, the cottage was retained 
 for the teaching staff of the girls' school ; and before 
 long a lady was introduced to him who seemed 
 likely to be a valuable helper in this work. About 
 the same time a family of five sisters, ardent and 
 instructed Churchwomen, settled in the parish. 
 They lived together for some years, helping the 
 Vicar in every way, and especially by forwarding 
 the various educational works which were now 
 springing up in Wantage. At the end of 1851 
 he wrote in the " Parish Journal " : " Our school 
 staff promises better than it has ever done. The 
 great accession to the parish of the Miss W.'s is 
 indeed a subject of greatest thankfulness." 
 
 But in spite of all this, the next few years brought 
 much disappointment and failure. 
 
 The girls' schools were, from one reason or 
 another, a source of much anxiety to the Vicar. 
 Still his constancy and perseverance in work to 
 
 1 Ir\ a letter, dated Florence, May 12, 1890, he wrote : "One thing 
 I feel pretty sure about, the danger of having too much beauty, 
 and too many valuable things in religious houses or even in churches. 
 In the one case they tempt the spoiler, in the other they make 
 God's house into a mere show-place for casual visitors. I am thankful 
 that our Community goes in for simplicity and plainness." 
 
 K
 
 146 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 which he had once put his hand never failed, and 
 he was rewarded by seeing his desire realised, though 
 not quite on the lines he had first laid down. 
 The story of success gradually growing up out of 
 disappointment and apparent failure is to be found 
 in the " Parish Journal " : 
 
 1852. Miss began a work school for the girls of the 
 
 parish who have past school days. They are to receive one 
 shilling weekly and their work sold. This will be a great 
 thing for them, enabling the mothers to spare them from that 
 demoralising habit of carrying babies about at sixpence a week. 
 We are working up a small middle school in connection with 
 the day school, under the superintendence of Miss . 
 
 The year 1853 saw the beginning of a fresh 
 educational work, combining under one roof a 
 training school for girls going to service with one 
 for pupil teachers in National schools. A lady 
 who had begun at Littlemore a school for the 
 training of girls for domestic service wished to 
 remove it to Wantage, and to complete her project 
 by building a suitable home. 
 
 The Vicar, overweighted with the financial anxieties 
 of his various schools, was not desirous for the intro- 
 duction of another into his parish, and said : " One 
 more school would fairly ruin him"; nevertheless, 
 the house was built and the work began. 
 
 In the entry at the close of the year he expresses 
 grave concern about his schools. 
 
 There is constant anxiety about those in charge of them. 
 
 Miss , from her delicate health and other anxieties, is 
 
 scarcely to be depended upon for long, while Miss , by 
 
 whose exertions the middle school is sustained, is absolutely
 
 1894 A SCHOOL SISTERHOOD 147 
 
 engaged to the St. Saviour's Sisterhood as soon as her place 
 can be supplied. We need much prayer for our work. I 
 feel daily more and more how little is needed to break it 
 rudely to pieces, and how helpless we ourselves are. Such 
 as it is, God alone has brought it to pass, and He alone can 
 uphold it. Are we sufficiently convinced of this ? 
 
 The offer of some voluntary workers in 1854 
 cast a ray of brightness on what would otherwise 
 have been a very depressing year with regard to 
 the schools. The draft of a letter to one of these 
 ladies shows the plan of operation the Vicar had 
 in view. In writing of the female department of 
 his parochial work, he says : 
 
 It consists (1) of a large National school; (2) of an infant 
 school ; (3) of a middle school for tradesmen's and farmers' 
 daughters; (4) of a small training establishment for mistresses; 
 and (5) of an industrial school for girls who have passed 
 through the curriculum of the girls' school. 1 . . . Our present 
 desire is to extend our operations through the deanery of 
 Wantage, of which I am Rural Dean, and endeavour to supply 
 the various schools and poor parishes of which it is composed 
 with school mistresses of a more truly religious character than 
 are, as I find from long experience, at present to be obtained. 
 
 1855 opened with fresh hope, and on St. James's 
 Day, on which day the foundation stone of St. Mary's 
 Home was also laid, the Vicar was gladdened by 
 what seemed to be the accomplishment of his long- 
 cherished plan, the beginning of a School Sisterhood. 
 
 At eight o'clock the Bishop instituted , , and 
 
 as Superior and Sisters of the new School Sisterhood, whose 
 charge should be the training of young children, servants, 
 and governesses. 
 
 But before twelve months had run their course 
 
 1 To these was shortly added a ladies' school.
 
 148 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 the scheme which William Butler had with so much 
 patience and prayerfulness sought to carry out, had 
 come to an end. 
 
 Oct. 1. Visit from Superior of School Sisters full of 
 troubles. There is need of help for the Middle school which 
 is in danger of falling to pieces. Sister Mary is overworkt 
 and I fear will not pass her Government examination. 
 
 A mistress must be provided for the Girls' school, provision 
 must be made for pupil teachers. . . . My fears last year 
 about the School Sisterhood have been sadly realised, and 
 now after much demonstration and talk, after the solemn 
 service and the Bishop's address on St. James's Day, it seems 
 
 that Miss is a person far too self-willed and unpractical 
 
 to leave in command . . . but besides all this, the poverty 
 of the household renders it absolutely necessary to make a 
 complete change. I cannot but believe that with proper 
 management and greater openness all might have gone well, 
 but as it is we must be content if we are not buried or 
 damaged in her ruin. . . . There are of course, thanks be to 
 
 God, subjects of joy and hope. Mrs. and her new 
 
 buildings in Tanner Street seem likely to afford a good prospect 
 of carrying on an educational work. 
 
 Feb. 17, 1856. Much anxiety about Miss and her 
 
 Sisterhood. After willingly leaving all things in my hands, 
 she now writes very dictatorially arranging them in her own 
 way. This of course cannot be permitted, and I see nothing 
 but a separation in prospect. May God guide us all in this 
 matter and suffer no human feeling to stand in the way of His 
 holy service. 
 
 April 12. It is very grievous to have been forced to give 
 up a plan which promised so well as that inaugurated on 
 St. James's Day, but the extreme irregularity of the Superior 
 and her impatience of control made it hopeless to go on with 
 her aid, and I must now carry on the work in a different 
 fashion. I trust and pray that we may yet gain the assistance 
 we need, and work through the ladies of the Home an educa- 
 tional system. 
 
 But at present with the very small numbers and invalided 
 condition of those who are there, it would be quite wrong to
 
 1894 FURTHER DISAPPOINTMENTS 149 
 
 build castles. We must just struggle on from hand to mouth 
 and pray for help. Everything is for the present provided, 
 yet I feel that all is uncertain and that everything may in an 
 hour be thrown on my hands. It is a most anxious and critical 
 time and only God's help will carry us through. 
 
 St. James's Day. One cannot help recalling St. James's 
 Day of last year and mourning over the failure of what seemed 
 then so fairly hopeful. God grant that such failures may 
 make us more careful and prayerful. 
 
 The anxiety shown in these extracts was but too 
 well founded. By the end of 1856 the Superior 
 and another member of the School Sisterhood had 
 joined the Church of Rome, and the third died a 
 few months later. 
 
 Whilst William Butler had thus been experiencing 
 disappointment in the work which was so dear to 
 his heart, he was also at the same time full of 
 anxiety for the Penitentiary, the support of which 
 had been left upon his hands. When he received 
 it into his parish, its originators had undertaken 
 to provide funds for its maintenance, but with the 
 secessions to Rome the channels through which the 
 funds would have flowed were cut off, and there 
 was no alternative for him but to accept the 
 additional burden. Not only the material responsi- 
 bilities, but the spiritual duties also at times fell 
 to his charge when ill-health compelled the chaplain 
 to be away from his post. Extracts from letters 
 to Sister Harriet 1 and from the " Parish Journal " 
 show how continuous and unflagging his work for 
 the Penitentiary was : 
 
 1 Appointed Superior, Feb. 21, 1854.
 
 ISO THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 1852. I keep thinking of you all, and when I find a chance of 
 advocating your cause. ... I cannot tell you with what pleasure 
 I think of our common work. Difficult and discouraging as 
 it is, there is quite enough result, and more than enough 
 promise, to cheer us on, and to me the feeling of definiteness 
 which is given is well worth almost everything. 
 
 1853. We visited Wells on our journey, and there I saw 
 our old friend, Ellen. . . . She was very glad, as you may 
 suppose, to see me, and I thought her manner and appearance 
 very much improved. 
 
 1857. Some more money is really needful, only about 3 
 in the last fortnight. I must try some other plan. 
 
 1862. I should like to do more at the Home ; the little 
 I see of the girls makes me long to look after them. 
 
 1862, Feb. 2. Anniversary of the opening of St. Mary's 
 Home. This gives one many thoughts of great thankfulness 
 to Him who has so mercifully supported and blessed our work. 
 
 And in 1863, in his deep anxiety to further 
 the work, and to strengthen the hands of the 
 Sisters, he asked his beloved and revered friend, 
 Mr. Keble, to preach the sermon at their anniversary 
 festival. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Monday in Whitsun Week, 1863. 
 
 I hope that you will not think me very troublesome or 
 impertinent in the matter of this letter. 
 
 July 22, St. Mary Magdalene's day, is the Anniversary of the 
 Dedication of the Chapel of St. Mary's Home, and we keep 
 it every year as the Sisters' Festival. The exterior Sisters 
 for the most part contrive to be there, and a few friends in 
 the town and neighbourhood "assist" on the occasion. It 
 would be a very great help to us, and the Sisters would consider 
 it as an exceeding kindness to them, if you could preach the 
 sermon. They merely want a few words of encouragement 
 from friendly lips written or unwritten, as the lips prefer. 
 Theirs is an anxious life, and they value most highly anything 
 which speaks of sympathy and recollection of them. I know
 
 1894 LETTERS TO REV. J. KEBLE 151 
 
 that I am asking a great deal; but, as I said at first, I hope 
 that you will forgive me for the work's sake. We are all very 
 
 happy here, with four of our children together keeping 's 
 
 sixteenth birthday. A. has come from Oxford, where he is 
 sojourning and reading till he joins Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 in October. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, May 31, 1863. 
 
 We are most thankful to be able to think of your coming 
 amongst us, and if, quod absit, anything should hinder you, 
 we will do the best we can to rig out a spar. 
 
 I take it for granted that you and others know the real 
 mind of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1 and certainly nothing 
 that he has done is irreconcilable with true, though perhaps 
 rather stern, filial holding to the Church. I suppose that 
 minds cast, like his, in a very logical mould, find an especial 
 difficulty in not " sticking to their texts." The Bishop defends 
 him heartily. The word of his which I least like, though I 
 can explain it, is that in his speech in the Qualification for 
 Offices Bill, to which, by the way, I would gladly have agreed, 
 when he said that the Church had nothing to fear from the 
 attacks of Dissenters, but only from her own internal differences. 
 Of course taken rigidly this is quite true, but it looked as 
 though in his opinion Churchmen were to do nothing to meet 
 the fierce efforts of the enemy, as if they were to hold the 
 trowel only and not also the sword. ... I have sent you 
 a couple of sermons, preached at the Dedication of the chapel. 
 Surely of all practical revivals none is more useful than that 
 of Sisterhoods. 
 
 Also, I venture to send you an Oratio Procuratoria, written 
 by a very great friend of ours, which some of us persuaded 
 him to print. We think it a very pretty bit of Latin. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, July 11, 1863. 
 
 The special point is, I think, to encourage and strengthen 
 the Sisters, as Sisters, rather than as connected with this 
 particular work of a Penitentiary, though of course the latter 
 1 Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
 
 152 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 would come in. It seems to me that in these days of "lower 
 Empire" luxury, it is no slight matter to have ladies living 
 together and "enduring hardness." It is a witness to the 
 Cross, when the doctrine of the Cross is all but dying out. 
 Could it not be shown that the Church has recognised the 
 spirit of such associations from very early times, and that 
 Martha and Mary have both their place ? Then would it 
 be possible to touch upon the dangers so opposite which 
 beset each, and to show how in each line whether in the 
 living in the "world," or in the Sisterhood, singleness of 
 purpose and the thought implied in the Collect for VI. Sunday 
 after Trinity would keep people right ? Would such a text 
 as Eccles. iv. 9-1 2 do 1 This is merely what occurs to me 
 in answer to your question, and I hardly venture to send it. 
 Pray do not think it at all necessary to use it. We shall 
 be only too thankful for whatever you may kindly say. . . . 
 
 We must now trace the lines laid down for 
 the guidance of the infant Community. There is 
 no doubt that an active Order was that which 
 had commended itself to William Butler's mind ; 
 but an address given in 1849 shows clearly how, 
 in those early days, he was not only desirous of 
 training souls for the Eeligious life, but that he 
 was willing, should it be the leading of Divine 
 Providence, that the contemplative life should have 
 freedom of development. 
 
 To serve is Martha's special work, to contemplate is Mary's. 
 Martha provides that Mary may have leisure to gaze. Mary 
 could not contemplate did not Martha serve. Mary's eye 
 must be for internal things if Martha cared most for external. 
 Martha purchases, arranges, helps; yet had she that in her 
 heart which she rather loves; for she serves, works, buys, 
 holds, dispenses for the love of Christ. Hence she will serve, 
 and from morning to evening, that others may enjoy His 
 Beloved Presence. The two characters form a perfect whole. 
 Each may, neither need fail.
 
 1 894 MARY AND MARTHA 153 
 
 Martha may be cumbered about much serving, Mary may sit 
 at His feet and despise her sister. Yet while Martha serves 
 for the love of Christ, gladly aiding Mary, whilst Mary sits 
 for the love of Christ, gladly praying for Martha, His blessing 
 is on each, each has a portion of the blessing of the other. Mary 
 has chosen that good part which shall not be taken away from 
 her. Martha has served Christ, and shall follow Him where 
 He is, "For where I am, there shall also My servant be." 
 
 Moreover in this present time surely Martha's work must 
 be the fittest preparation for Mary's. Surely it is hard to 
 leave this world after many years spent therein, suddenly to 
 renounce that increasing activity of mind and body, so common 
 in this generation ; the heart languishes for want of that to 
 which it has been used, the sudden revulsion is too great, 
 there is danger of formalism; it is unnatural to take up a life 
 of entire prayer and contemplation without some preparation, 
 some gradual step-by-step beginning. Martha's part seems 
 well fitted for this. Martha loves Christ, is in His Presence, 
 sits not at table, but serves. What next, but that she shall 
 partake of the fulness of joy at His right hand 1 She is doing 
 the very part of Christ, of Him Who is among men as he 
 that serveth. Has He not said of such, "He shall gird 
 Himself, and make them to sit down at meat, and will come 
 forth and serve them." 
 
 But one thing surely is needed by each ; the idea of con- 
 stant service . . . the Cross of Christ is grievous to those 
 only who endure it not. . . . Seek Martha's work, seek Mary's 
 work if you will, go on from strength to strength, but look 
 upon yourselves as for ever set apart, and the world as crucified 
 unto you, and you to the world. 
 
 Rules for the conduct of the Community, regulat- 
 ing hours of prayer, work, recreation, etc., were drawn 
 up and received the sanction of the Bishop of Oxford 
 in the early days of its existence ; and William 
 Butler's own words, written at no great length of 
 time before his death, show the solid basis on 
 which he sought to build it up.
 
 154 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 It may be well once more to state the principle on which 
 the Community of St. Mary the Virgin is based. It is this 
 simple, honest loyalty to the Church to which it belongs, that is 
 the Church of England, the Church of our native land. We 
 believe that the Church of England is a true branch of Christ's 
 Catholic Church, and that she has a right to lay down for 
 her children what they are to believe and to do. We believe 
 that in her Prayer Book her teaching and will are found. We 
 are not desirous to follow our own fancies, or to set forth 
 doctrines and ritual which belong to the Church of Rome. 
 We are satisfied with giving dignity and beauty to that which 
 we have of our own. We wish to follow in the steps of 
 those great men who heralded the great Catholic Revival in 
 the Church of England, and who never "left their first love," 
 as Dr. Pusey, Mr. Keble, Charles Marriott, Hugh James Rose, 
 and others of their kind men who combined the highest 
 saintlinesss of character with deep knowledge of theology, 
 keen appreciation of the standpoint of the Church, and 
 amplest learning and scholarship. 
 
 No one can read the " Oxford Tracts " without finding 
 himself in an atmosphere of honest Anglican teaching as 
 different as possible from some of the wild talk of the present 
 day. In this, by God's mercy, although it may not fall in 
 with some modern popular notions, we hope to abide. 
 
 But everything which brought out great principles 
 and added beauty and dignity to the worship of 
 God he allowed in the chapels of the Com- 
 munity. Nothing slovenly or tawdry could for a 
 moment be tolerated by him. His keen eye was 
 sure to detect the least flaw in the minutest detail. 
 Everything connected with the service of the altar, 
 or with any service or portion of the House of 
 God must have the most scrupulous and reverent 
 care. 
 
 The thoroughness which he looked for in all that 
 was connected with the chapel and its services was
 
 1894 LAYING FOUNDATIONS 155 
 
 to be carried into every detail of the daily routine. 
 The care, the orderliness, the love, the devotion of 
 the Home of Nazareth were to be the Sister's pattern 
 in her daily duties. Truly he could have said with 
 St. Paul that the foundation he had sought to lay 
 was Jesus Christ. The theme of the Retreat 
 addresses, which in the early days of the Community 
 he used annually to give, bore most frequently on 
 the life of our Holy Redeemer, and in these medita- 
 tions he would emphasise the first principles of the 
 Religious Life, Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, 
 which on one occasion he said " ought to be 
 engraved on the threshold of the convent door as 
 they were the very conditions of a Religious 
 Community." 
 
 He was ever careful himself, and impressed on 
 those who co-operated with him in the training of 
 souls to respect the individuality of each one. On 
 one occasion he wrote : " We must enclose all kinds 
 of fishes and bring them into God's service, toning 
 down yet without destroying the savour of the 
 individuality." No one knew better than he how 
 to allow scope for the enthusiasm of the young 
 and ardent, while he controlled and directed it. 
 And in all that he counselled and ordered he 
 himself set an example. The intense reality which 
 the spiritual life was to him, and the training and 
 discipline of the character required for a close 
 following in the footsteps of our Divine Master, 
 was that which made his teaching ring so true, and 
 consequently carry with it such weight. The lines
 
 156 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 written under a picture of our Lord bearing His 
 Cross, which hung over the mantelpiece in his study, 
 
 "Lord, my life's sole object be 
 With pure heart to follow Thee," 
 
 were not only the aim of his own life, but that 
 to which he sought to lead those under his 
 training. 
 
 Among the thirty-four works 1 in the hands of the 
 Community at the time of his death, nine were of 
 the nature of Penitentiary work, thirteen were 
 schools, and eight were in connection with parochial 
 work. His interest in the various works of the Com- 
 munity was keen. For many years he never failed 
 to pay annual visits to his foundations, but with 
 the increasing demands which work of all kinds 
 made upon him, he was not able in latter years to 
 observe this with regularity. It was his rule for 
 some years to write to all the heads of Branch 
 Houses at Christmas and Easter ; and he was 
 able to continue his Christmas letters to the end 
 of his life. 
 
 1 These were : at Wantage, the Penitentiary at St. Mary's 
 Home, St. Michael's Schools for Teachers and Industrial Girls, St. 
 Mary's and St. Katharine's Schools ; at Paddington, St. Anne's 
 House, St. 'Mary Magdalene's Home, and St. Mary's College ; the 
 House of St. Mary and St. John, Kennington ; St. James's Home, 
 Fulham ; St. Matthias', Earl's Court ; a Home for Inebriates at 
 Spelthorne ; St. Helena's Home for discharged female prisoners, at 
 Baling ; in the Peterborough Diocese, St. Mary's, Ketton, St. 
 Mary Magdalene's and St. Anne's, Leicester, St. Mary's, Narborough ; 
 the Cornish House of Mercy at Lostwithiel ; St. Peter's Mission 
 House, Plymouth ; St. Mark's Mission House, New Swindon ; the 
 House of the Holy Rood for Incurables, at Worthing ; All Saints' 
 Mission House, Wigan ; various schools and orphanages at Poona, 
 where also the Sisters have charge of the Sassoon Hospital.
 
 1894 TRAINING THE TEACHERS 157 
 
 With regard to the other side of the work, the 
 development of elementary schools under the gov- 
 ernment system necessitated the employment of 
 properly certificated teachers, and the chief educa- 
 tional work of the Community henceforward lay in 
 the charge of St. Michael's Industrial school, into 
 which also the mistresses, pupil teachers, and moni- 
 tors moved in 1858, and in carrying on the "Middle 
 school," which provided what is now called Second- 
 ary Education. At the end of 1862 the Vicar 
 writes : 
 
 The Middle school has thriven under the care of the ladies 
 of the Home. I have some anxiety about St. Michael's, which 
 has never quite satisfied me. I had good hopes, but now 
 illness and death seem to shatter all plans, and it is difficult 
 to see one step ahead. 
 
 But in spite of many difficulties and anxiety 
 caused by several outbreaks of typhoid fever, the 
 work steadily advanced, and the pupil teachers 
 for many years entered as head girls into Salisbury 
 Training College, one in 1860 appearing as first 
 in all England. 
 
 It became, however, a very grave question whether 
 the house which seemed so admirably suited for 
 educational purposes would not have to be aband- 
 oned. During the fifth visitation of typhoid, the 
 subjoined entry was made by the Vicar. 
 
 Feb. 4. Illness still at St. Michael's. Miss Osborne, after 
 nursing most carefully those who were ill, is now attacked 
 herself. This house is a matter of great anxiety, and it is 
 very difficult to see what is right to be done. It seems pitiful 
 to give it up, after all the expense it has cost, and all the
 
 158 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 benefits it seems calculated to give, and yet these outbursts of 
 fever thoroughly paralyse everything. 
 
 Happily with improved sanitary arrangements in 
 the town and school this was the last outbreak of 
 fever, and the entries of the final twelve years of 
 the Vicar's incumbency tell a tale of success crowning 
 the faithful persevering and prayerful efforts of 
 his earlier years at Wantage. Among the terse 
 and pithy sayings which might be called his axioms, 
 one which he constantly repeated as an encourage- 
 ment to others and which was certainly the result 
 of his own experience, was : " Prayer, faith, and 
 grind will carry most things through." 
 
 So the work was prospered ; and when he resigned 
 the charge of Wantage, the schools which thirty- 
 four years earlier had contained thirty-six children 
 twenty-four boys and twelve girls had increased 
 to over 750 scholars, varying in age from three to 
 nineteen or twenty. 
 
 Not content with merely supervising the labours 
 of others, he took his own part in the work of 
 education ; and as early as 1850 he instituted a 
 daily arithmetic class in his study, from eight to 
 nine A.M., for the girl pupil teachers. After a few 
 years he changed this to religious instruction, 
 choosing a subject not included in their year's 
 curriculum. In these classes he went most minutely 
 and carefully through a large portion of the Prayer 
 Book and some of the Epistles, spending a year or 
 more in the study of the shorter Epistles, and two or 
 three years over the longer ones. One day in the
 
 1894 THE VICAR AS A TEACHER 159 
 
 week the religious instruction was set aside for a 
 perusal of the Saturday examination papers, an 
 awe-inspiring time to both pupils and teachers, and 
 much to be feared by any one who had been idle 
 over her week's lessons. Sometimes he would vary 
 the usual lesson with mental arithmetic or the 
 study of w r ords, drawing out the reasoning 
 powers of his pupils, and making them answer 
 intelligently, accurately, and briskly. The stroke 
 of nine was a signal for the class to come to an 
 end, and all might be seen hurrying to school with 
 the Vicar in time for school prayers, which began 
 punctually at five minutes past nine. 
 
 His educational power was shown by his methods 
 of training those under his care. He considered 
 that a somewhat dry though open and kind manner 
 best marked the relation between teacher and 
 taught, and he greatly deprecated any approach 
 to petting or the like as dangerous in lifting in- 
 dividuals out of their class, and affording a stimulus 
 to vanity. He always aimed at combining strictness 
 and an almost stern manner with kindliness and 
 geniality, which led those with whom he dealt to 
 perceive his fatherly heart, and to turn to him in 
 difficulties and trials with confidence and trust. 
 The teachers trained in his schools always addressed 
 him as " sir," a title of respect which he deemed due 
 to the Vicar of the parish. He considered equality 
 and familiarity in manner to be opposed to the 
 spirit of the Fifth Commandment. 
 
 In his visits to the schools his keen eye instantly
 
 160 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 perceived want of method or care in any department, 
 and he was as quick in speaking of it as in seeing 
 it. He commented as fully upon the needlework 
 of the girls and of the pupil teachers as on their 
 history and arithmetic papers, and under his vigilant 
 rule there was no possibility of any continuance of 
 slovenly work. His own enthusiasm and devotion 
 to duty inspired his teachers, so that an esprit de 
 corps was created among them which, even when 
 they had left Wantage, enabled them to retain 
 the high standard which he had set before them. 
 " Mak' sikker " l make sure were words very 
 frequently on the Vicar's lips, and he impressed 
 upon his teachers never to believe that their pupils 
 knew anything unless they had proved for them- 
 selves that they did. 
 
 The high standard he set before his young people, 
 and to which he expected them to rise, made them 
 afraid of him until they learnt that he was anxious 
 to encourage all honest effort, and was ready to 
 be their friend ; then a deep reverential love grew 
 out of the fear he first inspired. His resourcefulness 
 never failed him in finding endless ways of making 
 his teaching attractive and of encouraging his pupils ; 
 punishment was not often resorted to, 2 and he con- 
 
 1 See Tales of a Grandfather, vol. i., chap. viii. 
 
 2 Once when he was showing the schools to a friend on her first 
 visit to "Wantage and some children came in after prayers had been 
 read, he said "You see those silly things, they have come late and 
 will get a pat, unless you beg them off as an act of clemency on 
 your first visit." She said "May I," and he replied, "Yes, you 
 may," and it was promptly done.
 
 1894 TEACHERS AND CHILDREN 161 
 
 stantly impressed upon his teachers that it was 
 some defect in their management if their children 
 required punishment. " The children get punished, 
 but the teachers deserve it ; the children get the 
 prizes, but the teachers earn them," he would say. 
 
 But it was in dealing with the really troublesome 
 that his power was most felt. He never would let 
 them pass out of his ken, and he often succeeded 
 in making them good in spite of themselves. He 
 believed in their best, and made them believe in 
 it also. He used to say, " If people will not do 
 right, you must make it more unpleasant for them 
 to do wrong than to do right " ; and thus the 
 difficult and troublesome girl found it the happiest 
 and best plan to follow the path of right. 
 
 He insisted that all whom he taught should look 
 him straight in the face. One week-day evening 
 when he was preaching, the pupils of St. Mary's 
 school failed to look up at him. Before leaving 
 the pulpit steps he called the Sister in charge to 
 him, and said he would not preach to " tops of 
 pates." 
 
 The following extract from a letter written to 
 one in charge of an educational work, is characteristic 
 of his thoroughly practical mind : 
 
 I cannot too earnestly impress on those who have the 
 charge of bodies the importance of having everything super- 
 eminently clean, bright, graceful. I am quite sure that the 
 more you have together the more important all this becomes. 
 Food, clothes, bedding, tubbing, light, air, recreation, work, 
 all need careful thinking out and must be perfect ; well looked 
 after as well as well arranged at the first. Evil creeps in
 
 162 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 insensibly, unless the greatest care is employed. No one can 
 be trusted by the head of the house what is everyone's work 
 needs constant looking after and testing. 
 
 His love went out to the children in all the 
 schools, but pre-eminently to the young teachers 
 who came in a special way under his care and 
 training. It was one of his keenest pleasures to 
 keep up a knowledge of them when their apprentice- 
 ship was completed, to hear from them and write 
 to them. 
 
 In his journeyings he would take opportunities 
 of seeing one and another, if his work took 
 him into their neighbourhood. The children in 
 the first class of the National schools were taught 
 to write to him as Vicar of the parish on his 
 birthday, and as the pupil teachers left Wantage 
 for work elsewhere they, too, would carry on the 
 practice, and letters flowed in to him from many 
 parts of the world, to which answers were always 
 promptly written. He greatly valued these tokens 
 of grateful affection. " No one," he wrote on one 
 of his latter birthdays, " who is not like me, growing 
 old, can appreciate how the heart clings to the love 
 of loving hearts. Love is the one thing which 
 remains when all earthly work and hope are ended." 
 And not only his former pupil teachers, but many 
 others who had been trained in the various schools 
 in Wantage were wont to write to him on his 
 birthday. 
 
 In answer to some of these he wrote : 
 
 Thank you heartily for remembering my birthday. It is
 
 1894 BIRTHDAY GREETINGS 163 
 
 very delightful to me now that I have withdrawn myself from 
 parish work, and from the close connexion with lads and lasses, 
 to find so many still looking upon me as a friend and pastor. 
 You would have been amused to see the barrow loads of letters, 
 etc., which greeted me on the morning of Feb. 10th. 
 
 Time is rapidly passing with me, and I shall soon pass with 
 it, and the wide waters of Eternity will be before me. I trust 
 that I may be ready when the time comes for that call, "Put 
 thy house in order, for thou must die and not live." It is 
 the only real and certain thing. If that goes right, then all 
 goes right. At the same time the thought of it need not 
 make one morbid or morose or dull or cheerless. While one 
 lives one loves, and love is the best preparation for Heaven. 
 
 LOWER HOUSE OF CONVOCATION, 1885. 
 
 I am writing in the midst of talk and bustle, but I must 
 somehow try and send you a word in reply to your very kind 
 memory of my birthday. . . . Each of the first class girls 
 wrote me their greetings, all well written, spelt, and expressed, 
 and full of Wantage news. . . . 
 
 Little gifts, too, from any of his former pupils 
 were valued and referred to years after by word or 
 letter. "I often think of you," he wrote to one 
 of the old pupils of the Middle school, "when I 
 put on my best coat which always carries in its 
 pocket the Prayer Book and little cloth case you 
 gave me." It was no wonder that with the con- 
 sciousness of the love that went out to him in 
 response to his pastoral love and care that he could 
 write, " I always feel when I leave you all at 
 Wantage that I have left my heart behind. . . . 
 Wantage, like Calais on Queen Mary's heart, is 
 written on mine." 
 
 A former pupil of St. Mary's school writes : 
 
 I had heard a good deal of the Vicar of Wantage even in
 
 164 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 the far north, but not until February, 1876, did I see him. 
 My friend and I called at the vicarage, and after some con- 
 versation the Vicar proposed taking us over the National 
 schools. . . . 
 
 I spent most of the next two and a half years at St. Mary's 
 school, where I often passed the vacation too, and words 
 would fail to tell of the home and happy atmosphere of that 
 wonderful place, all emanating from the Vicar, for his influence 
 told in every department, and no detail of the work or character 
 of each pupil was too small to interest him, and he cared the 
 same about what we should do or be on leaving school. At 
 that time there was a weekly privilege for the elder girls, viz. 
 to go to the vicarage on Wednesday afternoons for a class on 
 St. Matthew's Gospel. His notes were so exhaustive that they 
 branched out in every direction, and were given in his 
 characteristic bright fashion. With all the extensive duties 
 of his daily life, the Vicar only allowed absence from home 
 to interfere with this class. Still more to us were the monthly 
 Communicants' classes. ... It was certainly our own fault if 
 in a year we did not see twelve distinct steps in the ascending 
 ladder. 
 
 If we passed public examinations, the first thing was to go 
 and tell the Vicar. And then what interest he took in our 
 games ! I can see him now in the playground watching 
 our favourite "French and English," helping us to put our 
 whole hearts into it by his cheering interest and laughter. . . . 
 What high praise it was to hear from his lips, "She'll do," or 
 She's no goose," or "There's some fun in her." And when 
 school days were over he never forgot his pupils. The list of 
 their names which always stood on his study mantelpiece, 
 was graven on his heart, and he even seemed to remember 
 the circumstances of each one, and often asked us about one 
 another years after he had seen some of us. ... 
 
 You know how the constant wandering incident to my life 
 made many gaps and long intervals in my seeing the Dean. 
 But his welcome and interest were always the same. As time 
 went on the long intervals made it more possible to see a 
 change in him : physically, the greyer hair, the slight stoop, 
 and if it is not presumptuous to say it, the ever-deepening 
 beauty of the expression of his wonderful face, and the ever-
 
 1894 GRATIARUM ACTIO 165 
 
 nearing closeness of his "walk with God" so near that when the 
 end came there was not far to go. It was one of his favourite 
 expressions, "To walk with God." 
 
 On his seventieth birthday the teachers trained 
 and training at St. Michael's gave him a revolving 
 bookcase, which delighted him greatly. He alluded 
 to the gift in a letter to the Sister in charge : 
 
 I need not say how deeply and gratefully I value your 
 kind words and those of many others which greeted me to-day. 
 I begin to think that the best and brightest examples of 
 good women, simple, affectionate, true, pure-minded, devoted 
 to their duties, are to be found in the class of school 
 mistresses certainly taken one with another I know of no- 
 thing better than our girls. I do not mean that they are 
 faultless, but they show what honest living is, and what true 
 women's work is. ... The circulating library stand is 
 delightful. It is what I have longed for and never hoped to 
 have. It will be useful too to others when my short span is 
 ended. I mean to have a brass plate on the top with all the 
 names engraved upon it which you have sent me. I must 
 try and write a line of thanks to them all. 
 
 He sent to each donor a copy of a sonnet : 
 
 GRATIARUM ACTIO. 
 
 Much loved and loving Friends, in joy I greet 
 Your kindly gift, with precious memories fraught 
 
 Of long past hours, wherein in converse sweet 
 We sought with ardent effort teacher, taught, 
 
 To search the depths of that great Book, whose lore 
 Is the great joy of souls, which to have known 
 
 Is wealth far richer than the golden store 
 Or all the treasures that in earth are sown: 
 
 Gird you then well with this "fight Faith's good fight- 
 Quit you like men be strong" in faithless days
 
 166 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 Hold fast the Truth; in darkness be the light; 
 
 Defend Christ's Bride, the Church ; Christ's Standard raise 
 Howe'er the world may scoff; and in His might 
 
 Guide on His little Flock to love and praise. 
 
 Like other founders of Religious Orders, William 
 Butler recognised the importance of associating with 
 the Sisters earnest-minded people, both men and 
 women, who, while living in the world, should 
 yet be glad to undertake some portion of the 
 burden of maintaining the charitable works in which 
 the Community was engaged. The first name on 
 the list of exterior Sisters, a roll which now numbers 
 several hundreds, is that of Mrs. Butler, who all 
 her life not only took a keen interest in the wel- 
 fare of the Community, but for many years acted 
 as treasurer of the Penitentiary funds. Not only 
 were the original infirmary wing and the embroidery 
 room the gifts of an exterior Sister, but the 
 embroidery work itself was started by exterior 
 Sisters living in the w^orld who desired to add to 
 the funds for the support of the Penitentiary 
 work : 
 
 "It is impossible to say," wrote Dean Butler in one of his 
 annual letters to the associates of the Community, "how much 
 you and others have given us of comfort and support. With- 
 out your ready help we should indeed feel weak and lonely. 
 As it is we have the happiness of being surrounded by a very 
 atmosphere of prayer and affection, rising up from many 
 hearts and lips in nearly all parts of the world. We can 
 only in return assure you that your efforts are not wasted. 
 They are expended on Christ's little ones, Christ's poor lost 
 sheep, those heathen for whom as well as for us Christ died; 
 and you will receive, it cannot be doubted, the reward in the 
 resurrection of the just."
 
 1894 'A DANGEROUS MAN' 167 
 
 He naturally made acquaintance with any who 
 were staying at the Home, and such acquaintance 
 often ripened into friendship. In the early days of 
 the Community a lady travelling on the G.W.R. on 
 her first journey to St. Mary's Home met a fellow- 
 traveller who, finding out her destination, talked 
 much of Mr. Butler, and warned her to beware of 
 him and his religious opinions, for " he was a very 
 dangerous man." Afterwards, when the lady became 
 well acquainted with the Vicar, he heard the 
 story, and when she left the Home he presented 
 her with a copy of his Sermons for Working Men, 
 having written below her name, " from a dangerous 
 man." 
 
 His advice and sympathy were always ready for 
 those who sought them, and in latter years he 
 helped many associates by annually conducting a 
 Retreat for them, which work he continued till the 
 last year of his life. 
 
 One who attended several of these says : 
 
 There were one or two special marks of his teaching in 
 Retreats. 
 
 1. It was so bracing, and it made one return to one's duties 
 in the world with a steady determination to go out and carry 
 on bravely the Christian warfare. 
 
 2. It was essentially practical. It was to be the doing the 
 will of God, feelings were nothing; the text was, "If ye love 
 Me, keep My commandments." 
 
 Fresh resolutions were to be put in practice at once they 
 were to be something very simple, something one could set 
 up in one's heart, which would stand firm, strong, untouched, 
 and which one could bear with one to the grave. 
 
 3. Always, but especially in his three last Retreats, there
 
 i68 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 was strong teaching on the Church, and loyalty to the Prayer 
 Book. Religion was set up before us as a strong stern thing, 
 and what we had to do was to strive after honest simple 
 obedience to rule not self-pleasing, but endeavouring in all 
 things to do what pleased God. 
 
 4. His high ideal of woman's work, viz. the calming, puri- 
 fying, and elevating of society. He impressed upon his hearers, 
 that to woman belongs the formation of the character of all 
 around her, her children, her servants, etc. On woman also 
 depends in a very great degree the whole happiness of the 
 circle in which she lives, and on her far more than on the 
 man depends the spiritual life of the family. He unhesitat- 
 ingly asserted that if society is corrupt, then it is the woman's 
 fault. Man may tempt, but it is for the woman to be faithful 
 and firm, and by her faithfulness she will help man to mend 
 his ways, and lead him on in all that is holy and pure and good. 
 
 5. The Bible knowledge gained. This was a very distinct 
 feature, and one always went forth from his Retreats with a 
 sense that one had made several strides forward in the know- 
 ledge of the Bible. 
 
 Lastly, cheerfulness, hopefulness, faithfulness, was the last 
 word to us as we were about to go out of Retreat. 
 
 Another associate writes : 
 
 The notice of what proved to be his last Retreat for the 
 associates at the Home reached me in Florence. I had never 
 before been free to attend one, so I arranged my journey at 
 once and set off, arriving in time for one of the most helpful 
 few days of my life. The depth and yet the simplicity of 
 the addresses, and the wonderfully beautiful prayers at the 
 end of each, can be known only to those who heard them, for 
 it was always the way he said things as much as what he 
 said that was so impressive. Busy as he was up to literally 
 the last moment, he found time for a few minutes conversa- 
 tion at the end of the Retreat. He was standing one foot 
 on a chair all ready to go away, quite worn out, but bright 
 and interested as usual. I told him my special trouble, and 
 
 it was indeed perplexing. His answer was, "My dear , 
 
 pray about it ! " And these, his last words, will suit every 
 time, every place, every circumstance.
 
 1894 FIAT VOLUNTAS TUA 169 
 
 His training, writes another, was bracing, and I think I might 
 venture to say that the distinctive notes of most of those who 
 were formed under his guidance are cheerfulness and common 
 sense. He always set himself against any kind of morbid 
 melancholy, or even any that was not morbid. He would not 
 have people ever brood over grief, or go on sorrowing for 
 what was irremediable. " It is no use crying over spilt milk " 
 was one of his oft-repeated sayings ; another, " Je pleure mon 
 Albert gaiement," the words of Alexandrine de la Ferronays. 1 
 He could sympathise most tenderly with sorrow in the first 
 instance, but he could say something sharp if the sorrow was 
 prolonged beyond what he thought right and reasonable. He 
 set himself against moodiness or depression, or the sort of 
 melancholy in which young women sometimes indulge about 
 not being understood, not being sympathised with, and so forth. 
 Indeed he gave no quarter to any sort of sentimentality what- 
 ever. He was very encouraging to those who were willing to 
 do their best, but were discouraged by failures. His sense of 
 humour came into his training, and he did not hesitate to use 
 a grotesque word or ludicrous illustration where it expressed 
 his meaning, or was likely to impress it on the mind of his 
 hearer. 
 
 His continual teaching was the acceptance of God's will in 
 all things, and at all times. " Let ' Thy will be done ' be your 
 moral tonic." When he received a telegram summoning him 
 home on account of sudden and serious illness, he said, " There 
 is nothing for it but what I am always saying to you all* 
 'Fiat voluntas Tua.'" . . . Those who did not know him 
 intimately could have no idea of his great tenderness of heart. 
 In real trouble, real difficulty, real sorrow, he was ever ready, 
 and one never went away empty. 
 
 The understanding he had about illness or weak health was 
 sometimes almost unexpectedly striking, and especially so the 
 last three years before his death. He was so hard upon himself 
 that one was surprised at the way in which he entered into 
 the difficulties of bodily weakness, but he did so to a very mar- 
 vellous extent. And when he advised laxity for a time, one 
 felt one could trust him because he was so hard and self-denying 
 himself. In one of his last conversations he deplored the laxity 
 1 R6dt d'une Sceur, par M me - Augustus Craven, vol. ii., p. 385.
 
 i?o THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 of the present age as compared with the times of Keble, Pusey, 
 Marriott, etc., and quoted the texts, " Endure hardness, as a 
 good soldier of Jesus Christ," " When Jeshurun waxed fat he 
 kicked." . . . He always tried to develop individual tastes 
 in those under his training by suggesting books and employ- 
 ments suited to them. His whole life was full of thought and 
 care for others ; such little matters as a careful and prompt 
 answer to every letter were never overlooked by him. 
 
 Another writes : 
 
 I think it was the combination of holiness and love in the 
 character of the late Dean of Lincoln which attracted people to 
 him. When I first knew him, more than twenty years ago, I 
 was more struck by his brilliant gifts of conversation, his acute 
 eager concentration of mind on argument, and the sense of 
 controlled power, which was evident to any one who was in his 
 society ; but the better I came to understand him, the deeper 
 became the impression of his great personal holiness. He was 
 quite unconscious of the effect it produced, he never seemed to 
 think at all about himself in his intercourse with others, his sole 
 desire was to make them good and happy servants of God. 
 His own life had been devoted to his Creator from early man- 
 hood, and he was able " with a heart at leisure from itself" to 
 throw his whole energy into setting forth the glory of his Master, 
 and exhibiting as fully as possible the method of the English 
 Church for winning souls. His standard for himself and others 
 was a high one to attain it meant giving up a good deal, but then 
 he was so certain of ultimate peace and consolation, that it gave 
 courage and hope ; he always braced, never depressed the heart. 
 The Presence of God ruled his life, and especially his intercourse 
 with others ; this prevented all ' sentiment,' or dwelling upon his 
 personal sympathy (tender and deep as it was), and raised the 
 soul nearer to the source of all love and pity. 
 
 I was going through a great spiritual crisis during part of the 
 time we were friends, and was led to consult him, not in the way 
 that many persons did, in confession, but as an adviser. As soon 
 as he realised that my doubts were real and not affected, he took 
 me in hand, and with the most touching patience and unfailing 
 kindness helped me ; he wrote constantly, entered into every 
 difficulty, and guided me till, after some years, the light came.
 
 1894 ADVICE TO ONE IN DOUBT 171 
 
 The only rule he gave was "Persevere, live exactly as if you 
 believed." The clearness and strength of his faith of course 
 steadied mine. I will copy here a prayer he sent me, which 
 probably he used in the case of others. "Almighty God, in 
 Whom our fathers hoped and were delivered, and put their trust 
 and were not confounded, have mercy upon me Thy much tried 
 and troubled child and servant, and help me to find peace and 
 rest. Remove from me (if it seem good to Thee) the cloud of 
 doiibt and distrust which oppresses me ; open my heart to faith 
 and hope and love ; teach me to know Thee Who and as Thou art ; 
 and if it seem good to Thee that even through my whole earthly 
 pilgrimage I should never pass from darkness and sorrow into 
 light and joy, do Thou Thyself hold me fast to Thee, and bring me 
 at last to the glorious vision of Thy brightness and glory, where 
 Faith and Hope can no longer totter, nor Love fail; through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen." 
 
 It is quite impossible to describe his sympathy. He always 
 prayed for his friends, and I recollect his saying once of some 
 one who had died, " Forget ! how could I forget 1 When one 
 prayed twice a day for him for years. Now, I shall only put him 
 the other side of my prayers." This habit kept his interest warm 
 and keen, and to the end of his life he never omitted writing in 
 every crisis of joy or sorrow that came to me or mine. We 
 talked a great deal of many things, his and my work but he 
 never dwelt upon the former, except in connection with the 
 Sisters, or those who carried on the many branches he had 
 originated at Wantag eand elsewhere. One letter mentioned his 
 thankful joy at having been spared to communicate in the church 
 of his baptism (St. Marylebone). I fancy he had not been in it 
 for seventy years. His joyous nature, the ceaseless activity of 
 his life, his tender compassionate sympathy, his strong will 
 subdued by God, have ended as far as this world is concerned ; 
 but he is nearer than ever to the everlasting Love and Purity of 
 his Lord. 
 
 The increased distance from Wantage of his home, 
 first at Worcester and then at Lincoln, together 
 with his advancing years, made him consider the 
 question of laying down some portion of his charge ;
 
 172 THE SISTERHOOD 1848- 
 
 but happily he was never called upon to decide 
 which of those many interests, so dear to him, he 
 should let go. It was his desire to retain his 
 relations to the Community which he said was 
 dearer to him than his own life, as long as his 
 life was spared ; but it was this work which specially 
 taxed his strength during his latter years, and 
 made him consider seriously during the last few 
 months of his life whether he could continue the 
 burden of it, and the very frequent and long 
 journeys which it involved ; for, except at the time 
 of his annual holiday, he seldom let more than 
 three weeks pass without being at Wantage. While 
 he was there in November, 1893, the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury (Dr. Benson), who was staying in 
 the neighbourhood, came to see St. Mary's Home. 
 It occasioned deep joy to the founder that the work 
 he had so lovingly reared to the glory of God 
 should receive the blessing of the head of the 
 English Church, and it was, as it were, the placing 
 of the last stone on the edifice he had been instru- 
 mental in rearing. The Archbishop alluded to his 
 own pleasure in a note he wrote to the Dean 
 shortly after:. "What a welcome at Wantage, and 
 what a gift to light on you there." 
 
 One more visit in Advent which, at the time, im- 
 pressed some with a feeling as of a farewell, and 
 Christmas letters interchanged (loving words to the 
 Sisters in India were among the last he wrote)- 
 brought his earthly work for the Community to 
 a close. In the words of the Bishop of Lincoln :
 
 1894 THE WORK LAID DOWN I?3 
 
 "At his Lord's command he had worked, at his 
 Lord's command he was ready to die. He had not 
 striven to win souls to himself but to Christ, and 
 to Him, without one single word of fear or anxiety, 
 he resigned all that mysterious spiritual work in 
 which for so many years he had been ceaselessly 
 engaged."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 REMINISCENCES BY EEV. V. S. S. COLES. 1 
 
 MY first sight of my future Vicar was at Eton in 1858 
 or 1859. He used to visit his son, who was older, 
 and three divisions higher in school, than I was. I 
 remember well the first time I saw him walking 
 quickly along past Williams' shop. I think I must 
 have been told already that "Butler at Balston's" was 
 the son of the Vicar of Wantage, but I am not sure 
 that I knew even as much as that. At any rate his 
 appearance struck me as different from that of any of 
 the High Church clergy I had seen before, such as 
 Archdeacon Denison and Mr. Carter. He was much 
 more like the ideal I had formed of a mediaeval or 
 foreign ecclesiastic, and seemed to embody those 
 vague possibilities of what was hidden in the English 
 Prayer Book, which were so attractive to many young 
 people at that time. I had a good look at him soon 
 after, during some lecture at which he was present in 
 the Mathematical School, and then, as I watched the 
 eager, active play of his face and lips, and the restless 
 (not to say dangerous) swing of his foot, a certain fear 
 
 1 Various illustrative letters, etc., have been inserted in this narra- 
 tive. These interpolations are marked by brackets.
 
 1864 EARLY VISITS TO WANTAGE 
 
 '75 
 
 began to be mixed with the unique attractiveness 
 which he inspired. 
 
 Both feelings remain still, the sense that there 
 never was any one quite like him, and the conviction 
 that his displeasure was a serious thing to reckon 
 with ; though from a date not much later than 1858 
 they have been united with grateful affection. 
 
 When I went up to Oxford in 1864, my friend, 
 Montague Noel, was just moving to Wantage from 
 his first curacy. 1 The Vicar encouraged him to ask 
 his undergraduate friends to Wantage, and he was the 
 more disposed to take a kindly interest in me, because 
 I was a pupil of James Kiddell, who had prepared 
 him to see a " clumsy Christian." A third link with 
 Wantage was found for me in Father S. W. O'Neill. 
 I had been "up to " him in school at a time when, as 
 a deacon, he was still in the Windsor rifle corps, and 
 before his title at Clewer had brought him into 
 contact with the Catholic teaching which he at once 
 assimilated. Part of the time between his resignation 
 of his Mathematical Mastership at Eton and his 
 admission to the Cowley Society, was spent by him 
 as Curate of Wantage, and surely it is not the least 
 
 I 1 Extract from a letter to Rev. M. H. Noel, from Rev. H. P. 
 Liddon, dated 16th Sunday after Trinity, 1865 : " What you say 
 about the Vicar delights me. It is precisely my own feeling ; after a 
 lapse of eleven years I look back to my curate life at Wantage with 
 the most genuine pleasure, as to a time when, in the best sense of the 
 term, the sun was shining. You will gather up a great deal of 
 spiritual and practical experience to make use of in after life. . . . 
 But much of the benefit of contact with a good man cannot be reduced 
 to writing : it is the insensible though real action of spirit and 
 character of which we can only measure the drift and power after 
 some considerable lapse of time."]
 
 176 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1864 
 
 of the blessings which came to Wantage with the 
 Vicar that it should have a share in the memories, 
 experiences, and prayers of so simple and devoted a 
 saint as Simeon Wilberforce O'Neill. 
 
 What struck me most in the parish when I was at 
 last able to see it ? I am bound to say that I was 
 much more ready than I ought to have been to criti- 
 cise as well as admire what I saw. It was Noel's 
 mission to " bring things on," and my sympathies 
 were entirely with him. Even then (and much more 
 now), the Vicar's power of using an enthusiasm which 
 he controlled while he used it, seemed to me very 
 remarkable. He always appreciated Noel's character ; 
 and indeed the special work which St. Barnabas has 
 done in Oxford owes very much to his Wantage 
 training. In return, it may be noted, that in later 
 days, when the Dean was far from pleased with the 
 Ritualists, he was always willing to preach at St. 
 Barnabas, and always remained a warm friend and 
 helper to Noel. 1 
 
 [*On Sept. 22nd, 1877, the Vicar wrote to Kev. M. H. Noel recom- 
 mending the avoiding of things " needlessly irritating," and added : 
 " We do not enough realise the tremendous task which we have set 
 ourselves, viz. to deprotestantise a nation practically unbelieving, 
 which instinctively feels that Protestantism is like itself, and therefore 
 makes it its religion." On April 26th, 1892, he wrote : " I am 
 delighted to hear how well things go with you. But you really 
 deserve that they should go well, and you take the right way of 
 making them go well. My three rules of Faith, Prayer, and Grind, 
 are yours also, and they always, so far as I have seen, succeed. . . . 
 I have marked October 23rd to preach." And on August 18th, 1893 
 in answer to a request for a sermon at the Dedication Festival : 
 " Alas ! I have not got a single day in October which is not filled with 
 some tormenting engagement. I quite dread the thought of it, and 
 wish that it were well over. I am always thinking of solve senescentem
 
 1864 REVERENCE RATHER THAN RITUAL 177 
 
 It was then partly as a critic that I arrived at 
 Wantage, and my contribution to the facts which will 
 give a picture of the Vicar's life is that in spite of my 
 undisciplined desires for what "Wantage did not give, 
 it was simply impossible to resist the fascination of 
 the Vicar's strength and thoroughness. Moreover, 
 though desires for coloured stoles and other luxuries 
 were repressed, we knew well enough that the Vicar 
 was taking pains not to give scandal to the Wantage 
 people, and that at the Home he was always on the 
 side of development. 
 
 His thoroughness went into everything. He could 
 pass by things which he felt did not concern his work 
 and duty, when weaker men would have felt con- 
 strained to touch them ineffectually, but what he did 
 touch he dealt with thoroughly. Though there was 
 little show of ritual, the changes and improvements 
 all pointed straight to great principles. The chalices, 
 patens, and altar-linen were all accurately and fully 
 cared for. After Holy Communion, a Thanksgiving 
 was always said in the vestry, which included the 
 great prayer of St. Thomas Aquinas, Gratias Tibi 
 ago. While other people were introducing lights and 
 vestments, the Vicar of Wantage bore an almost more 
 striking witness to the Keal Presence, by the pro- 
 vision of the white houselling-cloth laid along the 
 
 equum ; but no one else seems to think of it, and I have to keep trudg- 
 ing on, with everybody's packs on my back. I always enjoy a visit to 
 Oxford and St. Barnabas, though the thought of dear Freeling being 
 no more with us makes me sad. No one has done better for the 
 Church than you. I cannot say how much I admire your steady, 
 unflinching work."] 
 
 M
 
 178 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1864 
 
 altar-step at all large Communions. The Daily 
 Service was sung with severe adherence to Plain-song, 
 not only for the psalms, but on week-days for the 
 hymns also, which were taken invariably from the 
 Hymnal Noted. 
 
 I need hardly add that the moral severity, the 
 appeal to the gospel pattern of life, which Dean 
 Church tells us had so much to do with the motive of 
 the Oxford Movement, had laid its sacred mark upon 
 William Butler and his home. Early rising never 
 laid aside, is always impressive to lads, to whom it is 
 always difficult, and the wonderful arrangements of 
 the first hours of the Vicar's day were more than 
 surprising. Before ten o'clock matins he had said 
 his prayers, often been at the altar either of the 
 Home or the parish church, taken a class of pupil 
 teachers, said Terce with his own household, and done 
 a good deal towards dealing with the day's letters. 
 I can hardly explain how it was, but he was the only 
 man whom I remember to have said the Offices as 
 quickly as he did without irreverence. I suppose it 
 was that you felt he was not hurrying for any reason 
 except to get more time for other things done unques- 
 tionably for the glory of God. Other good men have 
 given an example of reverence, but his example of it 
 was special in that he was so truly human in all his 
 talk and ways. His stories, even when they were 
 almost avowedly repeated again and again, convulsed 
 us all, with the best possible conscience ; he could 
 turn from business, discussion, playfulness, to say 
 prayers without any loss of dignity to himself or the
 
 1 864 A LENTEN GRACE 179 
 
 supreme cause which he always represented. Prayer, 
 though his utterance was alert, quick, bracing, to 
 those whom he led, always entailed a real sacrifice of 
 time and energy. Matins and evensong could never, 
 I think, have been omitted, though sometimes the 
 pauses between the departure of one penitent and the 
 entrance of another, when he was hearing confessions, 
 were thus utilised. His well-worn Bible and his 
 Latin Paradisus were always at hand, and yielded 
 up their treasures to the intent eye, and firm grasp, 
 which showed how even a few moments during the 
 reading of a Lesson, or the short pauses in the 
 Eucharist, were used to the best effect. 
 
 It was characteristic of the Vicar to disapprove of 
 Total Abstinence, and of a too rigorous devotion to fish 
 on Fridays, but every meal, hearty as he was, was 
 touched by habitual discipline, and no one could 
 have doubted the fitness and reality of the grace 
 which he always said in Lent a humble deprecation 
 of severe judgement on our unworthy following of 
 our Lord and His saints. 1 
 
 Two things you certainly soon heard of, whoever 
 you were, if you spent any time at Wantage, the 
 schools and the communicant classes. These were 
 
 [ J This grace was : "Blessed Lord, Who for our sake didst fast 
 forty days and forty nights, and hast given grace to many of Thy 
 saints to follow Thee in watchings often, in fastings often : Grant to 
 us whose faith is imperfect and bodies less subdued, grace to follow 
 Thee more distantly in a contrite and humble spirit, and grant that 
 the sense of this our weakness which we meekly confess before Thee, 
 may in the end add strength to our faith and seriousness to our 
 repentance ; Who livest and reignest ever one God world without 
 end. Amen."]
 
 i8o REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1864 
 
 the Vicar's delight, and he told you about them and 
 let you see his methods, with almost boyish pleasure. 
 The school prayers, modelled on Prime, as the family 
 prayers were on Terce, and carefully sung morning by 
 morning, lay at the root of his system. His daily 
 teaching of the pupil teachers, the constant reports 
 brought to him week by week, and often day by day, 
 of attendance and other matters, by the head teachers, 
 his frequent visits to the schools, secured his influ- 
 ence on the whole work. It has often been remarked 
 that he succeeded with girls, perhaps with women, 
 better than with men, though this latter statement 
 can only be made with very real qualifications. I 
 have heard him say many times that in the upper 
 classes the women were better than the men, and in 
 the lower the men were better than the women, 
 because among the poor the money was in the hands 
 of the wife, and among the rich in the hands of the 
 husband. I think this saying of his points to facts 
 in his own experience ; he succeeded pre-eminently 
 with educated women ; he did more with working- 
 men than with rich men. 
 
 Others will have spoken of the foundation of the 
 Community of St. Mary. But the Sisters themselves 
 cannot look at this great work from outside, and I 
 may be allowed to bear my testimony to the impres- 
 sion which the Dean's tender and manly guidance of 
 the Sisters left upon those outside the Community. 
 
 It is, I suppose, one of the great Christian para- 
 doxes that good men must always feel debts of 
 infinite obligation to the example and influence of
 
 1864 GUIDANCE OF THE SISTERHOOD 181 
 
 holy women, and yet recognise that the man's relation 
 to the woman is that of a ruler and guide. " The 
 head of the woman is the man." If I am not mis- 
 taken, the Dean has left a pattern, almost ideal, to 
 all who are called to discharge the delicate and im- 
 portant work of the pastor of a religious female 
 Community. He built up the Community of St. 
 Mary because he never allowed his self-depreciating 
 reverence to degenerate into weakness. 
 
 If the great work of his life was the foundation of 
 the Community of St. Mary, I believe that his en- 
 couragement largely helped Father Benson's venture 
 upon the similar undertaking for men at Cowley St. 
 John. The educated men whom he did influence 
 certainly found that his help was as unique as it was 
 excellent. But it was on women that his best 
 strength and most constant pains were spent, and 
 probably no man was ever more entirely the true 
 pastor in all his strong, fatherly, reverent dealings 
 with them. 
 
 Every priest who has found himself responsible for 
 a genuine parochial charge, after having formed his 
 convictions on the principles of the Anglo-Catholic 
 revival, has been compelled to consider what place 
 the doctrine and practice of confession ought to hold 
 in his work. To such a man the value of it will 
 probably be, as it was to the Vicar of Wantage, a 
 matter of happy experience, and the desire to offer 
 to others what has been a great blessing to himself, 
 must be very strong. At the same time, the pre- 
 judice against confession, still strong in the English
 
 182 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1864 
 
 mind, must have seemed, when William Butler began 
 his ministry, almost impregnable. This being so, 
 many clergy who practised it for their own good, 
 never mentioned it in their public teaching. Others, 
 determined to escape the questionings and self- 
 reproaches which silence seemed to entail, taught 
 confession with hardly any hope that their teaching 
 would be accepted. But to hold back a means of 
 grace from his flock, and to relieve his own responsi- 
 bility by a profitless and harmful defiance of popular 
 opinion, were alike alien to the Vicar's mind. He did 
 what some few other men of like character did also. He 
 abstained from speaking of confession in his Sunday 
 sermons, or hearing confessions in church. Those 
 most closely connected with his work, Sisters and 
 clergy, he drew to his own practice, and upheld them 
 in it. In the system of penitence arranged for those 
 who were the first charge of the Sisters, and occasion- 
 ally, in special cases amongst his parishioners, he used 
 confession, and when he did use it, his mode of 
 ministration was most thorough and definite, but he 
 never expected that it would become familiar to the 
 mass of his people. What seems to me characteristic 
 of him is that he believed that some of the advantages 
 of the universal recognition of confession, as part of 
 Church discipline, could be obtained by his communi- 
 cant classes. The connexion may not seem obvious, 
 as it must be clearly understood that no questions 
 were asked at the classes ; they were not on the 
 Methodist plan, but rather partook of the nature of 
 what are now called Meditations and Instructions.
 
 1864 VIEWS ON CONFESSION ^3 
 
 Yet the fact remains that when he was asked what he 
 hoped to do about confession, he often referred at 
 once to the classes, no doubt partly because he hoped 
 that some of those who attended them would take the 
 opportunity of remaining for confession, but also 
 because he felt that the really pastoral relation, which 
 as distinct from the forgiveness of deadly sin, is 
 one of the chief advantages of systematic confession, 
 might thus be obtained. 
 
 It may be doubted whether his solution of a very 
 difficult problem is beyond criticism, but that he 
 should have sought to secure as much of the essential 
 advantage as he could, when the complete attainment 
 of his aim was impossible, seems to me charac- 
 teristic of one of the most prominent and admirable 
 principles of his life. 
 
 [His matured views on this subject may be gathered 
 from a letter to Canon Carter, and the printed 
 declaration which he signed in company with others 
 of the same school of thought. 
 
 W. J. B. TO CANON T. T. CARTER. 
 
 TKNBY, Sept. 10, 1873. 
 
 I most willingly authorise you to append my name to those 
 who sign the paper on Confession. Having said this, I will 
 add that I think that it lacks the terseness and neatness of 
 that which we sent out some six years ago on the subject of 
 the Real Presence. That declaration fairly cauterised the 
 wound. Nothing serious has been done since. Even the Arch- 
 bishop (Longley) admitted that it had compelled him to revise 
 his opinion as to what the Church of England permits, "though," 
 he added, "I am an old gentleman, and I cannot change my 
 own private views." Could not then this declaration be reduced 
 into a few balanced and well-guarded sentences ? People will 
 read what is short but not what is long. . . .
 
 184 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1873 
 
 DECLARATION ON CONFESSION AND ABSOLUTION, AS SET 
 FORTH BY THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 We, the undersigned, Priests of the Church of England, 
 considering that serious misapprehensions as to the teaching 
 of the Church of England on the subject of Confession and 
 Absolution are widely prevalent, and that these misapprehen- 
 sions lead to serious evils, hereby declare, for the truth's sake, 
 and in the fear of God, what we hold and teach on the subject, 
 with special reference to the points which have been brought 
 under discussion. 
 
 1. We believe and profess, that Almighty God has promised 
 forgiveness of sins, through the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, 
 to all who turn to Him, with true sorrow for sin, out of unfeigned 
 and sincere love to Him, with lively faith in Jesus Christ, and 
 with full purpose of amendment of life. 
 
 2. We also believe and profess, that our Lord Jesus Christ 
 has instituted in His Church a special means for the remission 
 of sin after Baptism, and for the relief of consciences, which 
 special means the Church of England retains and administers 
 as part of her Catholic heritage. 
 
 3. We affirm that to use the language of the Homily 
 "Absolution has the promise of forgiveness of sin," 1 although, 
 the Homily adds, " by the express word of the New Testament 
 it hath not this promise annexed and tied to the visible sign, 
 which is imposition of hands," and "therefore," it says, "Absolu- 
 tion is no such Sacrament as Baptism and the Communion are." 2 
 We hold it to be clearly impossible, that the Church of England 
 in Art. xxv. can have meant to disparage the ministry of 
 Absolution any more than she can have meant to disparage 
 the Rites of Confirmation and Ordination, which she solemnly 
 administers. We believe that God through Absolution confers 
 an inward spiritual grace and the authoritative assurance of His 
 forgiveness on those who receive it with faith and repentance, 
 as in Confirmation and Ordination He confers grace on those 
 who rightly receive the same. 
 
 4. In our Ordination, as Priests of the Church of England, 
 the words of our Lord to His Apostles " Receive ye the Holy 
 Ghost; whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto 
 
 1 Homily " of Common Prayer and Sacraments." 2 Ibid.
 
 1873 DECLARATION ON CONFESSION 185 
 
 them, and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained " were 
 applied to us individually. Thus it appears, that the Church 
 of England considers this Commission to be not a temporary 
 endowment of the Apostles, but a gift lasting to the end of 
 time. It was said to each of us, "Receive the Holy Ghost 
 for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God, now 
 committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands"; and then 
 followed the words, " Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are 
 forgiven, and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained." 1 
 5. We are not here concerned with the two forms of Absolu- 
 tion which the Priest is directed to pronounce after the general 
 confession of sins in the Morning and Evening Prayer, and in 
 the Communion Service. The only form of words provided for 
 us in the Book of Common Prayer for applying the absolving 
 power to individual souls runs thus : " Our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 Who hath left power to His Church to absolve all sinners who 
 truly repent and believe in Him, of His great Mercy forgive 
 thee thine offences ; and by His authority committed to me 
 I absolve thee from all thy sins, in the Name of the Father, 
 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." 2 Upon this 
 we remark, first, that in these words forgiveness of sins is 
 ascribed to our Lord Jesus Christ; yet that the Priest, acting 
 by a delegated authority, and as an instrument, does through 
 these words convey the absolving grace ; and, secondly, that 
 the absolution from sins cannot be understood to be the removal 
 of any censures of the Church, because (a) the sins from which 
 the penitent is absolved are presupposed to be sins known 
 previously to himself and God only ; (b) the words of the Latin 
 form relating to those censures are omitted in our English form ; 
 and (c) the release from excommunication is in Art. xxxiii. re- 
 served to "a Judge that hath authority thereunto." 
 
 6. This provision, moreover, shows that the Church of England, 
 when speaking of " the benefit of absolution," and empowering 
 her Priests to absolve, means them to use a definite form of 
 absolution, and does not merely contemplate a general reference 
 to the promises of the Gospel. 
 
 7. In the Service for "the Visitation of the Sick" the Church 
 of England orders that the sick man shall even "be moved to 
 
 1 "The Form and Manner of Ordering of Priests." 
 
 2 " The Order for the Visitation of the Sick."
 
 186 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1873 
 
 make a special Confession of his sins, if he feel his conscience 
 troubled with any weighty matter." When the Church requires 
 that the sick man should, in such case, be moved to make a 
 special Confession of his sins, we cannot suppose her thereby 
 to rule that her members are bound to defer to a death-bed 
 (which they may never see) what they know to be good for 
 their souls. We observe that the words, "be moved to," were 
 added in 1661, and that therefore at the last revision of the 
 Book of Common Prayer the Church of England affirmed the 
 duty of exhorting to Confession in certain cases more strongly 
 than at the date of the Keformation, probably because the 
 practice had fallen into abeyance during the Great Rebellion. 
 
 8. The Church of England also, holding it "requisite that 
 no man should come to the Holy Communion, but with a full 
 trust in God's mercy, and with a quiet conscience," commands 
 the Minister to bid "any" one who "cannot quiet his own 
 conscience herein," to come to him, or " to some other discreet 
 and learned Minister of God's Word, and open his grief; that 
 by the ministry of God's Holy Word he may receive the benefit 
 of absolution, together with," and therefore as distinct from, 
 "ghostly counsel and advice"; 1 and since she directs that this- 
 invitation should be repeated in giving warning of Holy Com- 
 munion, and Holy Communion is constantly offered to all, it 
 follows that the use of Confession may be, at least in some 
 cases, of not unfrequent occurrence. 
 
 9. We believe that the Church left it to the consciences of 
 individuals, according to their sense of their needs, to decide 
 whether they would confess or not, as expressed in that chari- 
 table exhortation of the First English Prayer Book, " requiring 
 such as shall be satisfied with a general Confession, not to be 
 offended with them that do use, to their further satisfying, the 
 auricular and secret Confession to the Priest ; nor those also, 
 which think needful or convenient, for the quietness of their 
 own consciences, particularly to open their sins to the Priest, 
 to be offended with them that are satisfied with their humble 
 Confession to God, and the general Confession to the Church : 
 but in all things to follow and keep the rule of Charity ; and 
 every man to be satisfied with his own conscience, not judging 
 other men's minds or consciences ; whereas he hath no warrant 
 
 1 Exhortation in the Service for Holy Communion.
 
 1873 DECLARATION ON CONFESSION 187 
 
 of God's Word to the same." And although this passage was 
 omitted in the second Prayer Book, yet that its principle was 
 not repudiated, may be gathered from the "Act for the Uni- 
 formity of Service" (1552), which, while authorizing the second 
 Prayer Book, asserts the former book to be "agreeable to the 
 Word of God and the primitive Church." 
 
 10. We would further observe, that the Church of England 
 has nowhere limited the occasions upon which her Priests should 
 exercise the office which she commits to them at their ordina- 
 tion ; and that to command her Priests in two of her Offices 
 to hear confessions if made, cannot be construed negatively 
 into a command not to receive confessions on any other occasions. 
 But, in fact (see above No. 7, 8), the two occasions specified 
 do practically comprise the whole of the adult life. A succession 
 of Divines of great repute in the Church of England, from the 
 very time when the English Prayer Book was framed, speak 
 highly of Confession, without limiting the occasions upon which, 
 or the frequency with which, it should be used; and the 
 113th Canon, framed in the Convocation of 1603, recognized 
 Confession as a then existing practice, in that it decreed under 
 the severest penalties, that "if any man confess his secret and 
 hidden sins to the Minister for the unburdening of his con- 
 science, and to receive spiritual consolation and ease of mind 
 from him ; . . . the said Minister ... do not at any time 
 reveal and make known to any person whatsoever any crime 
 or offence so committed to his trust and secrecy, (except they 
 be such crimes as by the laws of this realm his own life may 
 be called into question for concealing the same)." 
 
 11. While then we hold that the formularies of the Church 
 of England do not authorize any Priest to teach that private 
 Confession is a condition indispensable to the forgiveness of 
 sin after Baptism, and that the Church of England does not 
 justify any Parish Priest in requiring private Confession as- 
 a condition of receiving Holy Communion, we also hold that 
 all who, under the circumstances above stated, claim the 
 privileges of private Confession, are entitled to it, and that the 
 Clergy are directed under certain circumstances to ' move ' persons 
 to such Confession. In insisting on this, as the plain meaning 
 of the authorized language of the Church of England, we believe 
 ourselves to be discharging our duty as her faithful Ministers.
 
 i88 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1873 
 
 Ash well, A. R., Canon of Chichester. 
 
 Baker, Henry W., Vicar of Monkland. 
 
 Bartholomew, Ch. Ch., Vicar of Cornwood, and Rural Dean of Plymton. 
 
 Benson, R. M., Incumbent of Cowley S. John, Oxford. 
 
 Butler, William J., Vicar of "Wantage, and Rural Dean. 
 
 Carter, T. T., Rector of Clewer. 
 
 Chambers, J. C., Vicar of S. Mary's, Soho. 
 
 Churton, Edw., Rector of Crayke, and Archdeacon of Cleveland. 
 
 Denison, George A., Vicar of East Brent, and Archdeacon of Taunton. 
 
 Galton, J. L., Rector of S. Sidwell's, Exeter. 
 
 Gilbertson, Lewis, Rector of Braunston. 
 
 Grey, Francis R., Rector of Morpeth. 
 
 Grueber, C. L., Vicar of S. James', Hambridge. 
 
 Keble, Thos., jun., Bisley. 
 
 King, Edward, D.D., Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. 
 
 Liddell, Robert, Incumbent of S. Paul's, Knightsbridge. 
 
 Liddon, H. P., D.D., Canon of S. Paul's, London. 
 
 MacColl, M., Rector of S. Botolph, Billingsgate, London. 
 
 Mackonochie, A. H., Perpetual Curate of S. Alban's, Holborn. 
 
 Mayow, M. W., Rector of Southam, and Rural Dean. 
 
 Medd, P. G., Senior Fellow of University College, Oxford. 
 
 Murray, F. H., Rector of Chislehurst. 
 
 Pusey, E. B., D.D., Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. 
 
 Randall, R. W., Incumbent of All Saints, Clifton. 
 
 Sharp, John, Vicar of Horbury. 
 
 Skinner, James, Vicar of Newlands, Great Malvern. 
 
 White, G. C., Vicar of S. Barnabas, Pimlico. 
 
 Williams, G., Vicar of Ring wood. 
 
 Wilson, R. F., Vicar of Rownhams, Southampton.] 
 
 I have mentioned that the Vicar was one of the 
 earliest friends of the Society of St. John the Evan- 
 gelist. He himself became an associate of the 
 Society, and the American Father Grafton, now 
 Bishop of Fond-du-lac, one of its earliest members, 
 took a Retreat at the Home soon after his arrival in 
 England. Thus, in the case of one of the highest 
 and most single-minded efforts springing out of 
 the Oxford Movement, the help which it would 
 be natural to expect from so powerful a personal- 
 ity as that of the Vicar of Wantage, being, as he 
 was, in full sympathy with the movement, was not 
 wanting. This leads to the consideration of his re-
 
 1869 UNIVERSITY PREACHER AT CAMBRIDGE 189 
 
 lation in general to the University and the Diocese. 
 He used to say that he could imagine no lot more 
 happy than that of a man who was a member of the 
 University of Cambridge, and lived fourteen miles, 
 from Oxford. Others have contributed their know- 
 ledge of his Cambridge life and associations. He often 
 spoke of his first acquaintance with the Tractarian 
 teaching having been due to his friend Philip 
 Freeman, afterwards Archdeacon of Exeter. They 
 went together on a reading party to the Lakes. 
 Each was to take one book for recreation, and when 
 it occurred to Butler to exchange with his friend, it 
 was the Christian Year that fell into his hands. 
 
 The late Dr. Luard's 1 was the name I remember 
 associating most closely with his visits to Cambridge, 
 and I well remember his interest in a course of 
 University sermons which he preached there, while 
 I was curate at Wantage. They were, I think, to 
 have been on some subjects connected with the 
 Person of our Lord ; but finally the Vicar took the 
 Trials of our Lord, a subject which his habitual 
 treatment of the Gospel narratives in Passion-tide 
 had made familiar to him. 
 
 I believe his sermons at Cambridge did their work, 
 as certainly did some which he preached in Oxford ; 
 but with all his great interest in literature and his love 
 for the Universities, his was not an academical mind. 
 No man was ever more relentlessly bent on testing 
 theory by practice, and Common Rooms, patient of 
 many theories, pause when a rapid and decisive 
 
 1 Registrary of the University.
 
 igo REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1866 
 
 transition from the abstract to the concrete is pressed 
 upon them. Perhaps, too, some of the epigrammatic 
 attacks, which were among the Dean's most effective 
 weapons, " Are you a sacerdotalist or a Plymouth 
 Brother ? " would be least effective in academic 
 society. But the witness of Wantage to the possi- 
 bility of carrying Church principles into practice 
 was not lost upon Oxford. It was his way to make 
 much of special friends, and his relations with a place 
 or a group would be through the friends who linked 
 him to it. His special and dearest friend in the 
 University, James Eiddell, was taken from him and 
 from Oxford when his brilliant career was only 
 approaching its fulness. Those who remember will 
 not doubt that any man who had his usual resting- 
 place in Oxford in Eiddell's rooms in Balliol, was 
 worthy of the best that Oxford had to give. 1 
 
 This may be the place to say a word as to William 
 Butler's relations with Bishop Wilberforce. The two 
 
 [ J The publication of a poem on "Balliol Scholars," by Principal 
 Shairp, of St. Andrews, gave great pleasure to the Vicar by the terms 
 in which James Riddell was spoken of. He wrote to express his 
 gratification to the Professor, who thus replied : " I have heard of 
 you often from dear C. E. Prichard. The way he used to speak of 
 Wantage and the life lived there remains ineffaceably on my memory. 
 I think it was at an earlier time that he used to go there than those 
 visits of James Riddell to which you allude. Thank you for giving 
 me those strangely touching words with which you say that James 
 Riddell closed his last sermon in your church. They are so very like 
 himself. I had two years ago, from C. W. Furse, notes of another 
 sermon he preached on a Good Friday in his church, which contained 
 much of bis beautiful spirit. My visits to England are now few and 
 at wide intervals. I don't see much chance of my being able to get to 
 Wantage, greatly as I should wish to do so. But, as you say, com- 
 munity of friends makes friends, and for the sake of those whom we 
 have loved and lost, I shall always think of you as of an unseen friend."]
 
 i868 RELATIONS WITH BISHOP WILBERFORCE 191 
 
 men understood each other as only men of action can. 
 Their bright amusing conversation was that of those 
 who shared the relaxation earned by the toil which 
 both knew well. Nevertheless, the Vicar of Wantage 
 was not simply one of Bishop Wilberforce's men. He 
 loved his Bishop and served him loyally, but it was 
 not on the Bishop's teaching that his convictions 
 were formed. To many who did not look below the 
 surface, it may have seemed that Samuel Wilberforce 
 was a genuine disciple of the Revival. I remember 
 the spot in Oxford where in 1868 a man just taking 
 his degree, who has since had a foremost place in our 
 Church life, said, " I have been brought up to look 
 upon the Bishop of Oxford and Dr. Pusey as being 
 the same thing : I am just beginning to see that their 
 line is different." Where that difference becomes 
 defined, William Butler stands on the side of Dr. 
 Pusey and not of Bishop Wilberforce. Apart from 
 the truth, as I believe it to be, of the stronger 
 position, the Dean's adherence to it exhibits the true 
 greatness of his character. As I have said already, 
 no man ever gave closer heed to the probabilities of 
 success in restoration and development of Church 
 life. His hand always touched the pulse of his 
 parish. No fear of seeming weak ever forced his 
 hand. But it was just because his mind was entirely 
 made up on the central doctrines of the Revival that 
 he could afford to be patient. He did not need to 
 prove the strength of an immature conviction by 
 forcing it into rash action. At the bottom he ever 
 held those sacerdotal doctrines, which, distinct as
 
 192 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1868 
 
 they are from the tendencies which really make for 
 the Roman theory, are, and were still more, forty 
 years ago, thoroughly unpopular in England. 
 
 The two things for the sake of which High 
 Churchmen have been forced to sacrifice oppor- 
 tunities of reaching their fellow-countrymen, are the 
 claim of an integral place in the pastoral system for 
 voluntary confession, and the belief in the reality of 
 the inward part of the Holy Sacrament, apart from 
 reception. On both these points it was the advan- 
 tage, as regards success, the weakness, as regards 
 consistency, of Bishop Wilberforce, to be, perhaps 
 at the verge of it, but still undoubtedly on the 
 popular side, and he was well aware that this advan- 
 tage or defect was not shared by Butler. Something 
 has already been said about his views as to con- 
 fession. Roughly they came to this, that it was 
 desirable for all who could believe in it, almost 
 indispensable for the perfection of the clerical and 
 the religious life, so desirable for some who had 
 fallen deeply, as to make it necessary to be bold in 
 propounding it. It was only his intensely practical 
 habit of mind which hindered the Vicar from pressing 
 it where he knew it was impossible to carry it, and 
 where he trusted that the fact of such impossibility 
 pointed to the guidance of the Divine Will. 
 
 No doubt this position far exceeds the limits 
 allowed by Bishop Wilberforce, in his published 
 utterances, to the use of confession. Far more did 
 his position fall short of that to which the Vicar's 
 deliberate conviction had led him on the matter of
 
 1867 A STUDY OF FRENCH COMMUNITIES 193 
 
 the Real Presence. The Bishop was, no doubt, in 
 this matter a genuine follower of Hooker, or, to be 
 accurate, of Hooker's teaching in the fifth book of 
 his Ecclesiastical Polity. The belief in the Real 
 Presence as held by Dr. Pusey rested on the force 
 of the words of our Lord as interpreted by the 
 teachings of the Fathers. Hooker's method was 
 rather to consider what is the true purpose of the 
 Sacrament, and then to inquire what manner of 
 Presence is necessary to that end. This method 
 would commend itself to a mind like that of the 
 great organising prelate, who may be pardoned if 
 in so busy and hard-pressed a life he sacrificed 
 something of the abstract completeness of truth to 
 the concrete necessities of his flock. But it was a 
 sacrifice which, in this matter at any rate, the 
 Vicar could never have endured, because the com- 
 plete truth of the Real Presence had made good an 
 appeal to the needs and instincts of his own heart, 
 and he had been led to see its astonishing power for 
 good in the spiritual life of foreign Churches, and 
 especially of their religious communities. I think it 
 was about the year 1867 that he made a study, during 
 his holiday, of some of the Jesuit houses in France. 
 I can never forget his account of this tour on his 
 return. He had done the thing thoroughly, like 
 everything else. He had gone prepared for con- 
 troversy, humbly secure that he was doing God's 
 work at home, and that it was impossible that he 
 could be called to sever his connexion with those 
 whom God had taught with and through him, but at
 
 194 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1867 
 
 the same time, with an open mind, ready to learn all 
 that the sight of principles just reviving at home, but 
 here in France habitually accepted, could teach him. 
 Thus when his hosts, stimulated to their most eager 
 and demonstrative efforts by the value of one who 
 seemed a possible convert of the first rank, pressed 
 him with a priori arguments for the Papal monarchy, 
 he felt an almost amused pleasure in reminding them 
 that the English were never logical, and strong in his 
 conviction that their theoretical structures would not 
 bear the test of historical fact, bade them grateful 
 farewell, while they stretched after him eager hands, 
 and kept repeating, " Soyez consequent, monsieur." 
 
 [Some letters written to Mrs. Butler at this period 
 describe these visits to the Jesuit Fathers, and also 
 show his remarkable power of throwing his mind into 
 the subject before him, undistracted by preoccupa- 
 tions. For it was during 1867 that, as the following 
 chapter will relate, for several months he was await- 
 ing the decision of the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 on his acceptance or refusal of the See of Natal. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 PARIS, August 16, 1867. 
 
 . . . Well, I am quite converted, and could spend weeks 
 in Paris. It is really a wonderful place, and I see no special 
 reason to suppose that the devil built it. It was a goodly sight 
 last night to see the immense masses of people, perfectly sober 
 and orderly, traversing the Place de la Concorde in all directions. 
 And the loveliness of the scene was beyond description. There 
 was a vast network of lamps festooned from the Tuileries right 
 away to the Arc de 1'Etoile all round those waterworks and the 
 huge obelisk, and the Rue de Rivoli had two long straight lines of 
 light on each side to the very end. The British Embassy was very
 
 1867 A VISIT TO S. SULPICE 
 
 195 
 
 cleverly illuminated, and as for the Prince Napoleon, his house was 
 a great blaze of light. Then of course there were ' feux d'artifice,' 
 etc. We wandered up and down till we were tired, more astonished 
 at the behaviour of the people than anything else. 
 
 I slept like a dormouse dreaming however greatly of 
 
 Colenso, whose pupil had been. He told me a good deal 
 
 about him. He was kind and painstaking, but always broaching 
 strange ideas. ... I breakfasted at ten or thereabouts (the 
 room was full of compatriots), indulging only in coffee and bread 
 and butter; and then I mooned forth to S. Sulpice, to one of 
 whose professors, M. Hogan, I had an introduction. He was 
 described to me as a French Liddon. Unfortunately he was 
 'en vacances' till Oct. 1. I therefore put a bold face on the 
 matter and walked straightway to M. le Cure* de S. Sulpice, by 
 name Hamon, with my card and letter. He was at home, and 
 we had a deal of talk. Of course he drove at me right and 
 left to convert me, and this wasted a deal of time. It was 
 useless to say, "Monsieur, j'ai pris mon parti j'ai lu tout ce 
 qu'il y a a lire," etc. He would return to the great question. 
 His point was simply iteration of 'pasce oves meas.' Without 
 the Pope no unity no faith. Greeks are schismatics. You are 
 mere women-ridden slaves governed by the Court of Admiralty. 
 Alas ! you poor Anglicans, we pity you with all our hearts 
 (and, suiting the action to the word, he threw his arms round 
 me), we love and would fain make you right. You are brought 
 up in the midst of prejudice, etc., etc. His arguing was very 
 weak, and when I said, "If the Pope is all that you say he is, 
 why should there ever have been the General Councils 1 " he 
 answered, there never was any real need of General Councils 
 the Pope only called them together out of complaisance. Well, 
 but, said I, the Council of Constance deposed the Pope. He 
 simply denied it. As for S. Cyprian, he tried to make out that 
 he gave in to the Pope. Have the goodness, said I, strong in 
 my S. Cyprian, to show me the epistle. Surely, in the Council 
 of Carthage, he distinctly, with his bishops wrongly, I grant 
 decided against the Pope in the matter of heretical baptism. 
 He said that he would do so, but did not fulfil his promise. I 
 looked on all this as so much lost time, being very anxious to 
 talk to him about Confession and various other matters. He 
 told me that he had 60,000 people in his parish and 25 curates.
 
 196 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1867 
 
 I am to call to-morrow at 12.30 and be introduced to some 
 school Sisterhood. From him I went (with a note from him) 
 to les Petites Soeurs des Pauvres, in the Rue de N. D. des 
 Champs, and stayed an endless time two or three hours, I think. 
 A dear young Irish lady, a nun, took me in tow. I could have 
 cried with delight at what I heard and saw. If I were to be 
 converted it would be by such sights as that, not by the good 
 Father's argument or eloquence. 
 
 The buildings form three sides of a quadrangle the entrance 
 being the fourth with a very pretty garden in the middle. I 
 observe that a cloister is everywhere ' de rigueur.' They have 
 250 old men and women under their roof, all happy and 
 apparently good. Wonderful are their arrangements for victuals 
 and clothing. I saw a drawer full of crusts, etc. The kitchen 
 was a model of neatness. The beds in long rooms as clean 
 and comfortable as possible. Each bed had a bolster and two 
 pillows with the whitest of counterpanes. The old men were 
 playing cards the old women needling. Some were sitting 
 in the cloisters, others sunning themselves in the garden. I 
 asked heaps of questions which were all answered simply and 
 naturally. There are about 1500 Sisters occupying 100 houses. 
 They have no money. It is all spent in building. They are 
 recruited from the bourgeoisie, with a few Dames de qualite. 
 They are all alike, and have to perform two years of novitiate at 
 the Mother house. No one is admitted who is older than 35, 
 because there is so much hard work to be done. They take 
 vows for three years only, and are admitted by the Superieur 
 General, a Priest deputed by the Bishop. Next to the Sisters of 
 S. Vincent de Paul they are the most flourishing order in 
 France. My conductress had been in London originally, but 
 had been sent to Paris some four years ago time enough for 
 her to talk English in the funniest French fashion and French, 
 as she said, well enough to amuse all the rest. 
 
 I saw all the old people in their various rooms, and contrasted 
 them mentally with our grumpy old wretches under the benign 
 
 influence of and the Board of Guardians. I am sure that we 
 
 shall never do anything decently till the English Government 
 works on very different principles and accepts religion as a 
 happyfying thing. The good Sister told me that the deaths of 
 these old folk were often most edifying, almost miraculous some-
 
 186; AT THE EXHIBITION 
 
 197 
 
 times. The Sisters never interfere with them in matters of 
 religion. They may be Mahometans, if they like. All this is 
 left to the Vicaire of S. Sulpice, deputed by the Cure to look 
 after them. 
 
 I lingered on, till I could in decency stay no more, left a 
 'piece de dix francs,' and by a circuitous railway route at the 
 cost of 4d. and an hour, made for the Exposition, at which 
 I had but a little time to spend. It closes at six. I saw how- 
 ever a few more interesting things, and then fell in with the 
 enormous crowd as they 'debouched' into the Pare which 
 surrounds it. I began to be very hungry, and though the 
 whole of the huge oval is surrounded with eating places, I 
 could not make up my mind to settle down anywhere. The 
 waiters seemed pert, and the prices high. At last I espied 
 'le grand Restaurant de Suffren' dinner 3 fr - 50 c - with a bottle 
 of wine. I entered, had a ticket handed to me by a tall gentle- 
 man ('decore'), and asked for a dinner 'en maigre,' which they 
 had some difficulty in supplying. By dint, however, of fish 
 and 'legumes,' I made it out pretty fairly, and sat wondering 
 at the good temper and unwearied waiting of the ' gar9ons,' and 
 also at the splendour of the room. Although merely run up 
 for the nonce it is lofty, beautifully painted, capable of holding 
 400 or 500 people. The arrangements were perfect, and every- 
 thing of the very best. Notwithstanding the vast number of 
 guests, each was thoroughly cared for. Then I wandered about 
 the Pare looking at the quaint buildings, all huddled together 
 Japanese, Tunisian, Swiss cottages, models of catacombs, an 
 Egyptian temple. It is enough to turn one into a little Alice, 1 
 and as the evening began to set in, I walked homewards along 
 the Seine for about a couple of miles. En route I asked a man 
 for the Pont de la Concorde, who answered, beating his breast 
 simultaneously, "English, English." He turned out to be a master 
 bricklayer from the Potteries, with his wife. We had a deal 
 of talk. He expressed great astonishment at Paris, thought 
 the French far ahead of us, and was especially struck with their 
 behaviour last night. " Why, sir, if it had been in England, half 
 of them would have been drunk, and they would certainly have 
 smashed those lamps for mischiefs sake." He was a Churchman, 
 and I directed him where to go on Sunday. He had met no 
 1 Alices Adventures in Wonderland.
 
 198 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1867 
 
 English, and was very pleased to have an opportunity of venti- 
 lating his mother tongue. ... I quite regret to leave Paris. . . . 
 I shall try to get an introduction from my friend M. le Cure de 
 S. Sulpice to some of the clergy on my line of march. 
 
 I could go on prosing for ever on the wonderful lift that 
 France has gained in all respects during the last twenty years ; 
 but, like an honest man, I must add that the lady the concierge 
 (English) at the H6tel Vouillemont, who is ' catholique,' declares 
 that the English people are much better, and that the French 
 are selfish and wicked. There is some comfort in that for a 
 wounded spirit. ... I forgot to say that I went into N. D. 
 des Champs, a very pretty wooden church capable of holding 
 500 or 600 people a far better instrument than iron. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 SOISSONS, ix S. after Trinity, 9.30 P.M. [1867]. 
 So here I am in this world-old city of Soissons, after a most 
 interesting day, quietly sitting down to write you an account of 
 my adventures. I thought this morning of Goldsmith's line, 
 
 " Remote, unfriended, solitary, slow," 
 
 and find myself neither one nor the other. But to continue my 
 history since Friday evening. Saturday I invested in pen and 
 ink, and have enjoyed peace ever since. Had a long talk with 
 Madame la Concierge of the Vouillemont, who, though herself a 
 'Catholic,' has no faith in the French, declares that they are 
 wicked and selfish, and hate us although they make their fortune 
 by us, as she tells Monsieur of the hotel whenever he makes his 
 many unkind remarks, as he did only to-day when she went to 
 post my letter to you. She is married to a Belgian, whose ways 
 are English, else she would not have had him, and she goes to 
 Bath, her native city, in January to place her daughter as a 
 pupil in a convent there. Then I started for S. Sulpice to find 
 M. le Cure", was hindered for a minute, and arrived just too late. 
 ' II est sorti il y a cinq minutes.' I was much aggravated, but I 
 turned my misfortune to account by hunting up Hachette's Library 
 and getting a guide-book for the part of France which I was about 
 to visit, and looking at the H6tel Cluny, which is close at hand. 
 . . . Soissons contains some 12,000 inhabitants, and is 
 crammed with curiosities and relics, as you may easily imagine. 
 One seems to breathe a Merovingian air. Chilperics and Clotaires,
 
 i86; AT SOISSONS 
 
 199 
 
 and Louis le Debonnaire, and folk of that sort, rise up round one. 
 Well, after 'du cafe,' and after fulfilling my own duties and 
 Services, I started for the Cathedral and High Mass at 9.30, 
 soon stumbled on the sous-sacristain, inserted a franc into his 
 willing paw, and asked him for a 'siege' whence I should not 
 be 'derange,' and asked a few questions as to how to get a 
 guide-book for Soissons. He put me in the part which surrounds 
 the choir, and I saw and heard to advantage. When service was 
 over at 11.30, a very pleasing young ecclesiastic accosted me, 
 and requesting me to follow him 'chez lui,' offered not only to 
 lend me books but himself to have the honour of showing me the 
 lions of the place. It was exactly what I wanted. I carried home 
 his books, got an hour's study of them, and from one till seven 
 he acted as my guide. He was extremely intelligent, and besides 
 giving me all information about Soissons, I learnt much from him 
 about the state of ecclesiastical concerns. He lives in a pleasant 
 little room, well filled with books and prints. His name and 
 title is " 1'Abbe" Ply, Vicaire et Maltre de Chapelle de la Cath4- 
 drale." We went first to the Abbey of S. Medard, formerly 
 Benedictine, a regular S. Denis of the olden days. There are a 
 good many remains chapel, crypt, etc. and it is now turned 
 into a Hospital for Sourds-Muets et Aveugles, under the charge 
 of Sisters 'de la Sagesse.' A very bright pretty young woman, 
 the Superioress, showed us over the establishment, and I literally 
 heard the deaf and dumb talk, and the blind read and play. I 
 made my small offering, thankful for the chance, and then we 
 marched off to S. Jean des Vignes, which must have been a 
 magnificent church; now only the face remains, i.e. two huge 
 towers and spires, with a triple doorway deeply recessed. We 
 climbed up to the top and had a good view of the country. My 
 friend told me that it is the current tale that Fenelon described 
 the island of Calypso from this riant valley. It seems that he 
 lived somewhere hard by while he wrote T6Umaque. Thence to 
 the ' petit Seminaire,' where there is a very interesting Roman- 
 esque church, and so up and down, seeing everything, and having 
 much talk as we passed along. My friend spoke very differently 
 from M. Hamon of S. Sulpice, whom he called ' un homme tres 
 distingue.' He told me that the power of the bishops was 
 ' enorme,' also that the congregations of regulars did much harm. 
 There is always an appeal to Rome from the bishops, but the
 
 200 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1867 
 
 Government always takes part with the bishops, declining to 
 know anything about Rome, and the result is constant acts of 
 tyranny and injustice. There was a good deal of truth, he 
 said, though mingled with mischievous intention, in Le Maudit. 
 Gallicanism is extinct. Two bishops were actually deposed for 
 not accepting the new dogma. Also one of the professors in 
 the seminary was expunged for holding Gallican views. The 
 fact is that the bishops find that nothing but Ultramontanism 
 will hold against the Erastianism of the day. At the present 
 time there is not a potentate who favours the Church. He gave 
 a sad picture of the religious condition of France. The lawyers 
 are unbelievers (Voltairiens), the doctors materialists, the bour- 
 geoisie careless, the majority never confessing from the day of 
 their confirmation, except a mere show of it at marriage, seldom 
 sufficient for absolution, till they die, when they make a per- 
 functory confession in order to be respectably buried. If the 
 clergy visit they are told, "We are delighted to see you as 
 friends, but we do not want you as priests" etc. There is great 
 difficulty in recruiting the priesthood. The mass are sons of 
 artisans and labourers, the best are sons of farmers. In the 
 seminary here are 70 or 80, not sufficient for the wants of the 
 diocese, which contains 670 parishes. Things are better in the 
 country, but the pay is very little, often only 900 francs per 
 annum, scarcely enough to buy food and raiment. A man must 
 be very gentle, complaisant, self-denying, and devoted. I longed 
 to ask him whence he sprang. His tastes, talk, and intelligence 
 and manners were thoroughly of the best. He was fond of 
 heraldry, architecture had a keen eye for stained glass and 
 good pictures. Finally he gave me a letter of introduction to 
 M. 1'Abbe Parizet, Chanoine aumonier de l'H6pital general de 
 Laon, and we separated, swearing eternal friendship. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 E.HEIMS, H6TEL DU LlON D'OK, Aug. 20, 1867. 
 
 ... I want to give you my impressions of Laon before 
 something else drives them out of my head. . . . You have 
 no idea of the magnificence of Laon. There it stands in the 
 midst of the sandy plain, something like Windsor Castle. It 
 is a most picturesque walled town, and reminded me of 
 Aubenas. Formerly it was 'la Laon Sainte,' from the heaps
 
 i86; AMONG THE JESUITS 201 
 
 of churches and religious Orders which filled it. You will 
 remember it as the battleground of Hugh Capet and the 
 Charlemagne race, then the endless quarrels between the 
 Communes, who seem to have had special privileges, and the 
 bishops who also had special privileges, and wished to 'parson 
 'em up too tight/ especially one Gaudry, whom the people 
 finally murdered, etc., etc. . . . My friend M. 1'Abbe Ply at 
 Soissons had given me an introduction to the Aumonier of 
 the Hospital. I went to his abode, but he had gone to some 
 sort of reunion in the country. I then resolved to betake 
 myself and my letter to the Peres Je*suites who inhabit the 
 ancient Abbaye de S. Vincent, a fine bold spur once strongly 
 fortified, directly opposite Laon, and connected by a most 
 exquisitely beautiful walk along the old fortifications. The 
 heat was tremendous, and I could find no response to my 
 knocks. At last I heard voices, and stumbled upon a whole 
 regiment of 'freres convers' solacing themselves in a roughly 
 built summer-house. I gave my card, and was ushered into 
 the building. After a quarter of an hour, an intelligent and 
 kindly man of about forty years old appeared, accosted me 
 very pleasantly, and conducted me over the place. I was 
 there for two hours and more. Of course we went at the old 
 story. He showed me a rubbishy account of the conversion 
 of a certain Mr. Pittar from the Church of England, written 
 in very bad taste, and as weak as possible. If these good 
 people knew how little impression that sort of thing produces 
 on the mind of those who have fought the thing through, 
 they would go to work in a different way. His great point 
 was 'One Faith,' 'One Church,' 'One Pastor,' 'On this 
 rock will I build My Church," etc. A Retreat was to begin 
 that very day. About forty were expected of the neighbouring 
 clergy, and my friend had the arranging of the beds, etc. It 
 amused me much to see them troop in much as we do at 
 Cuddesdon looking for their rooms. There was a salutation 
 consisting of an approach of the two faces, first on one side, 
 then on the other then followed the pointing out of the 
 room, and a kindly "Vous voila, monsieur," as each was suited, 
 or " Voulez-vous prendre quelque chose ?" " Voulez-vous diner 1 !" 
 I asked if I might join myself to the Retreat for two or three 
 days (it lasted a week). My friend in the kindest way
 
 202 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1867 
 
 promised to inquire of the Father who gave the Retreat, but 
 evidently was doubtful as to the result; and finally, though 
 he said they would gladly receive me for a 'Retraite par- 
 ticuliere,' which of course was not what I wanted, it came out 
 that the Cures and Vicaires present at the Retreat would 
 have thought it not quite the thing to be associated with a 
 'ministre protestant.' He wrote a very kind letter in my 
 behalf to 1'Abbe Modeste at Rheims, whom I shall visit by- 
 and-bye. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 H6TEL DE LA VlLLE DE PARIS, 
 
 STRASBOURG, Aug. 27, 1867. 
 
 ... I have now got a regular line of work before me, from 
 which I do not intend to swerve. Before I say more of this, 
 I must tell you how much Rheims Cathedral satisfied me. 
 There is really nothing like it, according to my idea. It rises 
 in perfect proportion, like a growth from the earth. Every 
 bit of it is thought out and carried out^-the west porches, 
 the sides, the buttresses, east end, and general ornamentation. 
 ... I went up to the top with a very agreeable old gentleman, 
 the concierge, whose son is a coiffeur in Edimbourg. He left 
 France, said my friend, because he could not bear to work on 
 Sundays. It is very delightful to me to get to the top of 
 these places because the eye ranges over all those old historical 
 battlegrounds, and you can picture to yourself a little of the 
 past. Of course I had the good Joan of Arc before me. It 
 seems to me that there are some pages of history for which 
 one would freely give one's life to prevent their having existed. 
 How those brutes of English could burn Joan of Arc, I cannot 
 imagine, and when one says English, of course it was quite as 
 much the French. . . . Well I must pass on. At 8 A.M. I 
 had a 'rendezvous' with my friend, the Pere Modeste, who 
 in the kindest way selected one of his party to take me over 
 the ecclesiastical institutions of Rheims. The Pere who went 
 with me was evidently a very clever man, a little perhaps over 
 thirty. He could talk English, French, and German, and was 
 full of feeling and humour. We went first to ' le Bon Pasteur ' 
 whose mother-house is, as you remember, at Angers. There was 
 some little ceremony but no real difficulty in obtaining per-
 
 1867 'LE BON PASTEUR' 203 
 
 mission from ' le Vicaire Ge'ne'ral,' a very pleasing old gentleman, 
 from whom I learnt a good deal as to their modus opera ml i. 
 He said that at first they took every applicant, but the row 
 of 1848 for the time broke up their house, and they began 
 again on better principles, refusing the worst, and confining 
 themselves to those who had not gone so far wrong. The bad 
 ones, he said, were " diables incarne's " when they became 
 furious, and did the others harm. Then we went to the house 
 itself a good spacious building, with an excellent garden. 
 The Mother-Superior, a lady of high family, was in bad health, 
 but her deputy took us over the place, and every now and 
 then a nun or two joined us, and chatted. The system seems 
 much freer than ours. The rooms are filled with beds, and a 
 couple of ' consacrees ' penitents who have given themselves to 
 the house sleep with them, while a Sister has a room at the 
 end. They are engaged much as ours are, in washing, sewing, 
 cooking, etc. One was sullen, and wanted to go, and I was 
 struck by the exact similarity of her looks and manner to ours 
 under like circumstances looking on the ground, picking at 
 her clothes, etc. Among the younger ones was a poor little 
 thing of nine years old who had run away with a lad from 
 her parents. The good Pere said a few words in each room, 
 and then all, Sisters and penitents, knelt for his blessing. We 
 saw another institution educational kept by the Freres 
 Chretiens, and then I went home and had my dejeuner along 
 with the Peres Jesuites. Of course all this was intermingled 
 with hot and interminable discussions which amuse them, 
 improve my French, and do no harm. I told them that ' 1'esprit 
 anglais est tres inconsequent.' " Mais soyez consequent soyez 
 consequent," shouted my good friends, and we all laughed 
 heartily. . . . 
 
 In the carriage was a chatty man, who told me that he 
 was inspector of all the schools in that part of the country, 
 Catholic, Protestant, etc., etc., an 'Israelite.' Pleasant would 
 it not be to have our schools inspected by an Israelite? 
 Unfortunately he got out at Bar-le-Duc, and I missed what I 
 much desired, a conversation with one of the other side. . . . 
 I went out to find the Strasbourg Peres Jesuites, and thence- 
 only think of this I was actually taken to 'Monseigneur 
 1'Eveque,' whom I had first seen figuring in one of the Emperor's
 
 204 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1867 
 
 carriages, and I was honoured by half an hour of 'causerie' 
 with him. He is a regular 'jolly old brick,' as you will see 
 when you have seen the photograph which I have purchased 
 in honour of the visit. He was very affable was beginning 
 his tour of Confirmations, thirty leagues off, to-morrow, else 
 would have, etc. Gave me free permission to circulate through 
 all the works of piety in the Diocese. Explained to me the 
 condition of Alsace where are 1,000,000 of inhabitants of whom 
 200,000 are Protestants told me how he chaffed the Protestant 
 ' Surintendant,' one Braun, on the subject of mixed marriages, 
 and begged me to call again if ever I came to Strasbourg. 
 'Voila!' . . .] 
 
 But all the while he felt a power among these dis- 
 appointed Fathers, to the attraction of which his 
 conscience offered no opposition. He saw no reason 
 why he should join them in making the Pope the 
 centre of their system, but he felt that principles he 
 had long accepted would justify him in seeking to 
 imitate the devotion which made the Blessed Sacra- 
 ment the centre of their life. On his return to 
 England this thought, if I am not mistaken, was very 
 prominent in his mind and conversation. He did 
 not hesitate to regret the law of the English Church 
 which made reservation impossible, except by what 
 seemed to him to be a sophistical disobedience. It 
 was however at this time that he taught the Sisters 
 to value a pause of some minutes after the Consecra- 
 tion and before Communion, -during which special 
 adoration might be offered to our Lord, present in 
 His glorified humanity under the Sacramental veils. 
 
 It was his convictions on such points as these, 
 which, in his case, as in that of Dr. Liddon, did not 
 allow of a perfect sympathy and co-operation with
 
 1867 RELATIONS TO RITUALISM 205 
 
 the great Bishop of Oxford. No doubt in both cases 
 they also retarded the promotion which would else 
 have been so natural at a much earlier time than that 
 at which, to some degree, it came. 
 
 I cannot leave the mention of Oxford without 
 giving myself the pleasure of noting that in later 
 years Butler's habitual host in the University was 
 the one man who so eminently carried on the tradi- 
 tions of refinement and uncompromising faith, which 
 marked the early Tractarians, George Noel Freeling. 
 I am not sure whether the Dean ever stayed in 
 Oxford after his beautiful presence had been with- 
 drawn ; l they were not very long parted, and their 
 rest is one. 
 
 But, if William Butler's thoroughness kept him in 
 the ranks of the unpopular, it must be plainly stated 
 that this does not mean that he threw in his lot with 
 the Ritualists. On the contrary, as soon as they 
 became a well-defined party, he stood aloof from 
 them. His action in this respect turns principally on, 
 or may be illustrated by, his relations to Alexander 
 Mackonochie. The future Vicar of St. Alban's, Hoi- 
 born, came, I think as his second curacy, to Wantage, 
 and remained there until he was chosen by Mr. 
 Hubbard to lead the mission of which he was about to 
 provide the external apparatus, into the slums of 
 Holborn. The Vicar used to say that if Mackonochie 
 had gone straight to St. Alban's from Wantage, 
 instead of spending an interval at St. George's 
 Mission where the pea-shooters and profanity of the 
 
 1 He was Canon Bright's guest at Christ Church in Oct., 1892.
 
 206 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1869 
 
 Protestant mob tended to drive him into whatever 
 was most opposed to them the result would have 
 been other than it has been. During the early years 
 of St. Alban's the Vicar of Wantage preached there 
 from time to time. On one occasion bouquets were 
 provided not only for the choir-boys, but for the 
 clergy, possibly as a step to the wreaths of roses with 
 which the Canons of St. Paul's were anciently decked 
 on Corpus Christi Day. The Vicar related to us 
 when he came back to Wantage how he had furtively 
 laid down his nosegay on a seat during the procession, 
 and how it had been gravely restored to him by the 
 Ceremoniarius. ' Tan turn religio potuit.' Before long 
 the developments at St. Alban's went beyond the 
 lines which Butler could conscientiously accept, but 
 his friendship for Mackonochie was never shaken. 
 He regretted the introduction of the mid-day Choral 
 Eucharist. To him, as to Mr. Bennett of Frome, it 
 seemed fitting that the Divine Mysteries should not 
 be exposed to the possible irreverence and almost 
 certain unpreparedness of an eleven o'clock con- 
 gregation. At Wantage, as at Frome, the Choral 
 Celebration was early, and that which followed 
 matins was plain Celebration, intended for aged and 
 infirm communicants. It may be questioned whether 
 the missionary power of the mid-day High Service, 
 the experience of which is perhaps the best argument 
 in its favour, ever came under the notice of the 
 Vicar. Certainly there were other matters con- 
 nected with the ritualistic development which would 
 have made him disinclined to look favourably upon
 
 1870 RELATIONS TO RITUALISM 207 
 
 it, though as to the privilege and benefit of assistance 
 at the altar when not actually receiving, he had 
 no doubt whatever. 1 
 
 It was, I think, in the summer of 1870 that the 
 Vicar spent Trinity Sunday in London, and went 
 with a friend, for whose opinion he had a great 
 respect, and who was strongly opposed to the new 
 departure, to see some ritualistic churches. I think 
 they chose St. Michael's, Shoreditch, in the morn- 
 ing ; certainly they went in the evening to St. 
 Paul's, Lorrimore Square. Here notice was given 
 of the observance of the Feast of Corpus Christi 
 on the following Thursday, and the preacher ex- 
 plained that, although it was not a feast marked 
 in the Prayer Book, the origin of festivals had 
 been their spontaneous local observance, and it was 
 fitting that the desire for a festival of the Holy 
 Sacrament should give rise to a development of this 
 kind from local centres. I have been accustomed 
 to connect the Vicar's dislike of Eitualism with that 
 Sunday. 
 
 It would have been difficult for him, in the 
 midst of his unceasing work, to have entered upon 
 a thorough study of ritual, and impossible for him 
 to have taken the matter up without thoroughly 
 studying it. Now and then the fitness of some 
 
 1 He wrote in the "Parish Journal," on April 2nd, 1869 : "I should, 
 indeed, be grieved if 'non-communicating attendance' were to be 
 substituted for regular and frequent participation of the Bread from 
 heaven. We should gain little if the sacrifice were offered, and 
 the partaking of the sacrifice ignored or set aside." But see 
 Appendix II.
 
 208 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1872 
 
 isolated point of ritual, from its connexion with doc- 
 trine, struck his imagination and his devotion. I 
 remember, for instance, that when during his illness 
 after an accident in 1872 I had the privilege of giving 
 him Holy Communion, he received vested in a stole, 
 having learned, as he said, that every Communion 
 of a priest had something of a sacrificial character. 
 But, on the whole, he did not take to the ritual 
 movement. I think he never felt as much at home 
 in a chasuble as in a surplice and stole, and the 
 elaboration of details of ritual was thoroughly dis- 
 tasteful to him. 
 
 On one point connected with this matter I feel 
 at a loss to describe his position : indeed, I am 
 inclined to think that he never quite defined it 
 himself ; I mean I do not know what to say as to 
 his sympathies during the ritual prosecutions. It 
 is quite certain that he looked upon that interpre- 
 tation of the royal supremacy which justifies the 
 ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Sovereign exercised 
 through the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, 
 as impossible, and irreconcileable with a belief in the 
 spiritual authority of the Church. He had known 
 long before I knew him the strain of the Gorham 
 decision, which cost him the loss of H. E. Manning, 
 and with him of Miss Lockhart, who was first Mother 
 Superior of the Home. His reason for not following 
 them did not lie in any acquiescence in the decision 
 of the Privy Council, but in his heartfelt repudiation 
 of the moral authority of that decision. He delighted 
 to quote Mr. Keble's strong statement, that if the
 
 1870 PRIVY COUNCIL JUDGEMENTS 209 
 
 Church of England did not destroy the Privy Council 
 the Privy Council would destroy it ; he did not 
 hesitate to describe the Church of England as a 
 bleeding heart from which the life was flowing through 
 the wounds inflicted by the Erastian action of the 
 State. 
 
 So far as the Church has now been relieved in 
 any degree of the evils arising from the Privy 
 Council's jurisdiction, it has been in consequence 
 of the resistance to the ritual judgements, and their 
 final discrediting in the case of the Bishop of Lincoln. 
 It is, however, the fact that, during the anxieties of 
 the Purchas and Bidsdale cases, the Vicar of Wantage 
 was far less keen as to these particular instances than 
 he had been on the general principle brought into 
 prominence by the Gorham judgement, and later by 
 the prosecution of Mr. Bennett. What I believe he 
 felt was that while the claim of spiritual jurisdiction 
 by the Crown was as disastrous as he had always 
 maintained it to be, dignity and the proportion of 
 truth suffered through the emphasis laid on points of 
 ceremonial. It was no point of conscience with him 
 to resist these decisions, though it was not a point 
 of conscience to accept them. At some moments I 
 think it must be allowed that he tended to the 
 opinion that on matters not essential, even though 
 belonging to the spiritual domain, the decision of the 
 State should be treated with respect. 
 
 [His views on the relations of Church and State, 
 especially as bearing on the subject of Ritualism, 
 were expressed at various times to Canon Liddon and
 
 210 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1870 
 
 others, and near the end of his life, to the Very Rev. 
 Randall T. Davidson, Dean of Windsor, now Bishop 
 of Winchester. 
 
 W. J. B. TO KEY. CANON LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Dec. 5, 1870. 
 
 While candidates for Confirmation are coming and going, I 
 must try to sandwich in a few lines suggested by your letter 
 of this morning. I quite agree with you that the judgement 
 on A. H. M., viewed from a legal point, is harsh and unfair. 
 And you know how for years the Court of Final Appeal has 
 been in my opinion the great o-Kai/SaAov in the way of the 
 Church I may say even also of the State for what can be 
 more [illegible] than for the State to incite her people to accept 
 and believe in a man-made religion and to this practically the 
 decisions come. But my quarrel, so to call it, with our dear 
 old friend, is quite apart from the P. C. I complain (and I 
 
 think that people like Lord , a type of a class not the worst, 
 
 complain also with justice) that he is trying to force into 
 the use of the Church of England that which the Church in 
 no way authorises, that he is making his own private fancy 
 the rule of public ministrations. In other words, he is acting 
 in the very most Protestant fashion. Of course he would say 
 that he went by the rule of the Catholic Church, etc., but 
 unless he is prepared to assert that Rome, and nothing but 
 Rome, teaches that rule, I cannot see where he finds it. I 
 maintain that no work can stand which abjures obedience. If 
 I cannot obey where I am, I should think it my duty to go 
 where I could obey. Individuals are far too weak and ignorant to 
 be permitted to take lines of their own, except within certain 
 specified limits. And it seems to me that this determination 
 to make out a new religion which this really is e.g. the en- 
 forcement of fasting Communion, the making confession a 
 matter of salvation, or at least a duty for every soul besides 
 a heap of ritualistic practices, some of the queerest kind, 
 which he introduces into the services, must naturally kindle a 
 correlative antagonism which will not stop till it has caused 
 great damage far and wide. And I own that I find myself in 
 a trying dilemma.
 
 1871 RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE 211 
 
 I sympathise with all my heart in the demonstration of 
 Catholic and Sacramental teaching which A. H. M.'s line, as I 
 think, only simulates. I cannot express my opinion without the 
 certainty of being misunderstood, yet I feel it untrue to throw 
 myself heartily into the ranks of the defenders, as I gladly 
 would have done if only I could believe his method to be loyal 
 and true. I am writing, as you will perceive, somewhat 
 hurriedly and dishevelledly please remember in strict privacy 
 to you. 
 
 W. J. B. TO 
 
 March 7, 1871. 
 
 I have thought very carefully, and I trust without any sort of 
 personal feeling, on the serious issue which lies before us. I 
 come to the conclusion that I have only two alternatives between 
 which to choose. I must either be ready to resign my work, 
 or ready, if compelled, to obey. It seems to me almost im- 
 moral to chance what may come to say if we hold together 
 ' they ' will never venture to attack so large a party, and the 
 like and to comfort oneself with this. It is at least possible 
 that ' they ' may do so ; and I am bound to express to those who 
 ask me, and to settle moreover for myself, what I should do 
 if I am attacked. This is why I state distinctly now, before 
 the crisis arises, that I should not consider myself as acting 
 rightly in the sight of God if I were deliberately to say, "I 
 shall stand firm," supposing that by firmness is meant the giving 
 up of that to which I believe God has sent me, rather than that 
 I should consent to celebrate at the N. end of the altar. I 
 ask myself which will most damage the work of God the 
 separating myself from those precious souls among whom I 
 have ministered for so many years, and leaving them to the 
 sort of teaching which in all probability, under the circum- 
 stances of the case, would follow mine or the yielding to what 
 in fact, when you come to analyse it, is brute force, in a matter 
 which only indirectly affects the truth I say the former. If 
 the doctrine were directly impugned, the case would be very 
 different. But I can teach it, even though at some disadvantage, 
 in many other ways, even supposing my position at the altar to 
 be interfered with. Of course if I were bidden not to teach it 
 at all, I could have but one answer to give and to teach it 
 all the more.
 
 212 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1877 
 
 I am very sorry to differ from you and others as to the 
 wisest and best course. But I cannot set aside what my con- 
 science dictates; and you will, I know, give me credit for 
 dulness and ignorance if you will, but at least for honesty of 
 purpose. For the present I shall certainly go on as I have gone 
 on for the last twenty-four years, and the arrangement of the 
 Church is such that it is very unlikely that any one would be 
 idiotic enough to wish me to celebrate at the N. end, where 
 I could not possibly be seen. But I do not choose to shelter 
 myself under this, and therefore I speak my mind. 
 
 \V. J. B. TO CANON T. T. CARTER. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, March 19, 1877. 
 
 I do not feel that my opinion is worth anything, but as 
 you wish for it, I will try to state shortly what occurs to me. 
 Certainly in olden days those who professed High Church 
 principles paid great deference to bishops. Witness the giving 
 up of the ' British Critic ' so very able and useful as it was 
 at the desire of Bishop Bagot ; and I remember well how, at 
 the Consecration of Hursley Church (1848), Mr. Keble made 
 all kinds of arrangements which were distasteful to himself, 
 to meet the wishes of Bishop Sumner. 
 
 It is quite true that the bishops have for the most part 
 acted, as we think, in a cowardly and one-sided manner; but 
 I do not agree that even this exonerates us from certain duties 
 which we owe to them. Is there not a certain Sacramental 
 strength given to order, which may be called the promise of 
 the Fifth Commandment? 
 
 I am greatly in favour of Liddon's suggestion not his how- 
 ever only of endeavouring to get at least points of doctrine 
 ruled by the collective Episcopate. I believe that they would 
 be 'guided into truth.' In regard to individual bishops, for 
 my own part I have always accepted the directions of our 
 bishops. Certainly it may be said that men like Bishops 
 Wilberforce and Mackarness are exceptions. But I am quite 
 sure that if any bishop, in whose Diocese I was, had bidden 
 me take down the pictures of the Stations from the walls of 
 my church, I should have obeyed him without demur, and I 
 should have believed that in doing so somehow or other
 
 1889 RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE 213 
 
 the work would have been more prospered than if I had 
 retained them against his will. I cannot help thinking that 
 if some of our friends had yielded in such matters as this, 
 the graver questions of the position of the celebrant, etc., 
 would never have been raised. The P.W.R. Act no doubt 
 puts the bishop in a false position. It makes him the in- 
 strument of an Act of Parliament officer, instead of a father 
 in the Church. But it seems to me that that is his affair. 
 We have nothing to do with the action of the State law, 
 but with the bishop. In his inner consciousness he may be 
 Lord Penzance's servant, but outwardly he speaks to us as 
 a bishop. 
 
 I do not wish to speak positively, or to tie myself down 
 to an opinion, but I incline to think that I should obey the 
 bishop in all but questions of doctrine. There my own con- 
 science must be master. 
 
 W. J. B. TO VERY REV. RANDALL T. DAVIDSON, 
 DEAN OF WINDSOR, 
 
 THE DEANERY, LINCOLN, April 3, 1889. 
 
 I have read your letter to the Times, and I heartily recognise 
 the fair and kindly spirit in which it is written. It seems 
 however strange to me that a man so clear-sighted as you 
 are should not perceive that in the sort of challenge which 
 you throw out to the High Church leaders to formulate their 
 conception of a satisfactory final court, you effectually cut the 
 ground from under their feet by requiring that the proposed 
 court shall be such as will satisfy and pass through Parliament. 
 It is, I fear, quite beyond all hope that Parliament will ever 
 consent to the kind of court which could possibly content 
 those who look upon the Church as a divine institution. 
 Abstractedly there is no reason why in England as well as 
 in Scotland an Established Church should not manage its own 
 concerns. But in England the State has got the Church in a 
 vice, and will not release it, except by the action of dis- 
 establishment. All the influences of the country would oppose 
 any step towards rendering real liberty to the Church; not 
 least of all a very large proportion of her own laity and 
 clergy. The High Church party is in a most pitiful minority,
 
 214 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1889 
 
 and always must be so. Its teaching goes directly against the 
 idea which the great majority of people form respecting religion. 
 It is, in a word, sacerdotalism, the one thing that they hate,, 
 because it opposes itself to human pride and human sensuality. 
 It is useless to assert as may be asserted truly that the 
 Prayer Book and Catechism are on our side. Plymouth 
 Brethrenisni is practically the religion of the land, of all except 
 the Roman Catholics, not of course actually professed, but the 
 fair logical outcome of the principles which men hold. As 
 things are, the Prayer Book and Catechism give to such as 
 myself a fair chance of holding one's own, and personally I 
 should be quite content to avoid all litigious matters, except 
 perhaps what is called the Eastward position, and work on, 
 as I have worked for many years, teaching through them that 
 which I believe to be true. I wish with all my heart that 
 others had done or would do the same. I believe that these 
 great results would have followed. We could have done the 
 work, so far as it is possible to do it, and kept the persecutors 
 at bay. But the party called Ritualist would not be patient, 
 in fact in many cases have no real love for the Church, rather 
 like chaos and anarchy, always crave for KCUVOTC/DOV TI, and 
 have dragged us into the mess. It is they who have brought 
 into discussion this question of the court, and forced the 
 Church to face it. I remember too well the Gorham decision 
 of 1850. It was very startling. But while it upheld in his 
 preferment a man of unsound doctrine, it did not go so far 
 as 'quemlibet occidere populariter' to give wrong judgement 
 against any one in order to please the people. It certainly 
 watered down the plain teaching of the Baptismal office, but 
 it did not punish clergy for following the direct orders of 
 the Rubrics and the previous decisions of the Council itself. 
 It is this burning sense of injustice which has stirred up many 
 hearts, and I see no way out of the difficulty so long as this 
 court continues to give such judgements. 
 
 I dread Disestablishment with all my heart, because I know 
 pretty well what the result of it would be. It would throw all 
 power into the hands of a laity who, although no such ignor- 
 amuses or such tyrants as the Irish laity, would nevertheless 
 very materially narrow the liberty which is now enjoyed or 
 maintained. The Ritualist party would at once find their
 
 1889 RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE 215 
 
 position intolerable, and so would many who are not Ritualists 
 but are High Churchmen ; and as a choice between two evils, the 
 supremacy of ignorant Protestant laity and that of the Pope, 
 many would prefer Rome. People had better realise the fact, 
 viz. that Rome would be the real gainer. The Church of 
 England, so far as one can judge, would sink to the level where 
 it stands in the Colonies, i.e. a secondrate or thirdrate sect. Her 
 ministers badly paid and hardly dealt with would no longer 
 count as gentlemen, enthusiasm would die out, and although it 
 might drag on a somewhat unhonoured existence, it would no 
 longer be the Church of the people. 
 
 The best solution of the difficulty, so far as I can see, is 
 that such a judgement may be given as shall quell these efforts 
 of the Church Association to bully and destroy that with which 
 they disagree. I believe that if these attacks were once for all 
 firmly checked the present stress and tension would be relieved. 
 I am confident that the clergy who would grievously transgress 
 would be so few as to be outside of consideration. The vast 
 majority would be content to be guided by the Prayer Book, 
 their conscience, and the wish of their congregations. 
 
 The Church Association folk are not candid. They pretend 
 zeal for the Prayer Book now, because it suits their turn. 
 Formerly they mobbed Mr. Courtenay of Exeter to death, and 
 drove Mr. Bennett from Knightsbridge, because they obeyed the 
 Rubrics and the Bishops of London and Exeter who wished 
 to maintain the Rubrics. What these men really want is to 
 stamp out what they call Sacerdotalism, which has as fair a claim 
 as their own to find a place among us. Keep these men from 
 mischief, and all will, I believe, be well; bating of course the 
 differences and anomalies which cannot fail to arise where some 
 15,000 men are concerned. 
 
 I have written nearly as long a letter as your own. I trust 
 that as I felt constrained to read yours, you will not call me by 
 evil names for asking you to read my reply. 
 
 THE VERY REV. RANDALL T. DAVIDSON TO W. J. B. 
 
 Private. 4th April, 1889, DEANERY, WINDSOR CASTLE. 
 
 I am grateful to you for your most interesting and important 
 letter. I only wish you would say publicly, either in a letter to
 
 216 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1889 
 
 the Times or otherwise, what you have said privately. I cannot 
 see that the position you take up corresponds in the least to the 
 position of those whom I have tried to get an answer from. You 
 feel, as indeed I do myself, that the present final court is unsatis- 
 factory. Our difference as to its unsatisfactoriness would be a 
 matter of degree. But, unless I misunderstand you, you are so 
 far prepared to make the best of a difficult position that you do 
 not desire in the meantime to fly in the face of the existing 
 authority, such as it is, and to flout it and jeer at it before the 
 eyes of the public. You feel as I do, that it is possible to teach 
 all true doctrine about the Church's rights and authority without 
 defying unnecessarily the powers that be. My ' challenge,' since 
 you call it so, though I did not use the word, was certainly not 
 directed to any one who holds that position. If I seemed to 
 include all such, I must have expressed myself awkwardly. I 
 believe incalculable good might come from such an one as your- 
 self speaking out about the impracticableness of the extreme 
 men; but it would be an unpopular thing to do, and it is 
 perhaps not fair to ask you for such an utterance, not that you 
 would mind the unpopularity, but it might lessen your good 
 influence with some of your friends. 
 
 I am, as you may imagine, half buried in the letters I have 
 received upon the subject. I wish most of my correspondents 
 expressed their meaning as clearly as you do.] 
 
 These disconnected remarks have started from the 
 time when I came to Wantage before my Ordina- 
 tion, and record impressions which, though matured 
 later, have their roots in that time. I ought to 
 ask myself what can be contributed from my 
 memories of my two years service at Wantage, 
 from Advent 1869 to the beginning of 1872? 
 
 The Vicar's invitation came with most welcome 
 kindness, when I had disappointed his hopes for me 
 of a good class in the final schools. He knew well 
 that I had not worked as I ought, and no one 
 appreciated better the value of a good degree. I
 
 1869 VICAR AND CURATES 217 
 
 had dreaded his displeasure, and his generous offer 
 of work at Wantage, without a word of blame, was 
 one of the most comforting things I have ever 
 experienced. So I went to Cuddesdon already 
 accepted for Wantage, and had the good fortune 
 while there to have some hand in persuading 
 Herbert Woodward 1 to give up the idea of another 
 curacy he was thinking of, and to look forward to 
 joining the Wantage staff. For my share in this 
 at any rate, the Vicar would not have repented of 
 his kindness. 
 
 As to my own relations with the Vicar, I think I 
 can sum up my experiences in the two words, strictness 
 and confidence. It was a strict standard of life that he 
 set before us ; he expected it to be strictly observed ; 
 w r here he felt that it helped us, he even required 
 a somewhat strict account. But along with this, 
 he trusted us in a way that could not but win 
 trust in return. We were left free to conduct our 
 school classes, to preach our sermons, even to arrange 
 (in my case) for Charlton Confirmation classes as 
 we thought best. This combination of strictness 
 and confidence had the effect of making us feel that, 
 while we were still very young, and needing a hand 
 over us, we had received an office which he respected, 
 and to which he gave its due. As soon as we were 
 ordained priests, he was careful to give us our turns 
 in celebrating, reserving however the right to take 
 the place of the celebrant if he was at all late. He 
 took me himself to many of the houses in Grove 
 
 1 Now Precentor of Worcester Cathedral.
 
 2i8 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1870 
 
 Street which were to be in my district, and pointed 
 out I think, one or two which I was to make a 
 new start with, as they were more or less offended 
 with him. 
 
 In Lent the Vicar came down and started some 
 mission services in the Grove Street chapel. His 
 sermon remains in my mind more distinctly than 
 any other I ever heard him preach. (I was seldom 
 in the parish church on Sundays.) It was very 
 characteristic; a powerful translation into easy form 
 of the beginning of the Ignatian exercises, on the 
 purpose of God for each man's life. " You could 
 not be in a better place for your salvation than 
 you find yourself in, by God's appointment." 
 
 We met every day in the Vicar's study at one 
 o'clock, and sometimes waited for him, as his work 
 at the Home was growing, and kept him longer 
 than he wished. He would rush in, talk to us 
 while he washed his hands, arrange a number of 
 details, lay his finger on some of our weak points, 
 make a joke or two, tell us news (which he always 
 seemed to find time to get at), and finally, as I 
 have already said, pass with unfeigned reverence, 
 but unabated energy, into the Oratory for Sext. 
 After dinner there was another conference and 
 Nones. In 1870 the Franco-German War was 
 going on, and the Vicar always had the morning's 
 facts ready to talk about at dinner. Like every 
 great human interest the shock of the two nations 
 moved him deeply, and he delighted later to spend 
 what time he could give in the service of the
 
 1870 DAILY LIFE AT WANTAGE 219 
 
 Hospital Corps in Germany. His days were always 
 full, but he would find time to entertain a guest, 
 his own, or ours ; a lad from Oxford, or a priest, 
 or any one who turned up. Now and then there 
 were special people, whom it was a great memory 
 to have seen, Archdeacon Freeman, Miss Yonge ; 
 above all, Bishop Forbes. 1 
 
 Comparing the Vicar's work with that of other 
 men in similar positions, I have been struck by 
 the freedom of his life from those half-secular 
 employments which so often intrude upon time due 
 to the highest ends. 2 He never seemed oppressed 
 by business ; now and then there would be a meet- 
 ing of the Governors of the Wantage Charities ; 
 I think once a year they came to dinner : an 
 occasional morning would be given to a sanitary 
 committee. But such things were never to the 
 front, though evidently they were not neglected. 
 Excellent business habits made their execution 
 light ; very much was done quietly and effectively 
 by Mrs. Butler. It seemed always possible for the 
 head of the parish to seek first the kingdom of God. 
 
 He was far too much in earnest to be distracted. 
 When his going to Maritzburg as Bishop was not 
 improbable, he thought out all that would have 
 to be done ; Sister Eliza, the successful and devoted 
 mistress of the Middle school, was ready to go 
 with him ; he had thought of plans for raising 
 
 1 The Eight Reverend A. P. Forbes, Bishop of Brechin. 
 
 2 He always declined to become a magistrate, saying that 
 " preachee preachee," and " floggee floggee," were incompatible 
 occupations.
 
 220 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1870 
 
 necessary funds ; but all was to go on at Wantage 
 as if he were not going to the last half-hour. 
 
 After I left Wantage, I had the privilege of 
 often seeing the Vicar there, and afterwards at 
 Worcester, and once, I think, at Lincoln. But I can 
 hardly add anything of special interest as to this 
 time. It only remains to note some miscellaneous 
 facts or thoughts which recur. 
 
 He was a severe critic of methods which seemed 
 to be fussy or unduly valued, apart from the spirit 
 which should inspire them. " I shall not believe 
 in Retreats till the clergy leave off smoking, nor 
 in missions till all the Penitentiaries are filled," 
 was a characteristic saying. 
 
 It seemed to me very characteristic of him that 
 he conceived a great love for the manly simple char- 
 acter of General Gordon. There were certain per- 
 sons in the parish at Wantage to whom he was very 
 closely drawn, such as William Dixon, the good old 
 farmer, who trusted him at first and supported him 
 through opposition 1 (he was dead before I knew 
 Wantage) ; Sister Eliza, certain Sisters and teachers 
 still living, and amongst his curates, William New- 
 bolt, Montague Noel, and Henry Houblon, his suc- 
 cessor at Wantage. Outside the parish he had an 
 unbounded delight in the work of James and Tom 
 Pollock at Birmingham, in Reginald Porter's dutiful 
 and deep work at Kenn, more than all in the suc- 
 cessive works by which his great friend Albert Barff 
 
 J He opposed him however at first in the matter of the Church 
 Eestoration.
 
 1893 A LAST MEETING 
 
 221 
 
 has served the Church. For him at North Moreton the 
 Vicar of Wantage preached a Mission, the only one 
 he ever took, 1 and up to the last he stood in the 
 closest relation to this dear and trusted friend. 
 
 My last interview with him, and my last letter, 
 remain in my mind. I met him at the Wantage 
 Road station in the Lent of 1893, and he drove me 
 up to the Home in his fly. His ceaseless talk never 
 flagged the whole time : amongst other things he 
 spoke with great satisfaction of his grand-daughter's 
 coming marriage. Miss - kindly asked me to 
 
 come to the 1 ? Mead 2 later, and the Dean was quite 
 himself, as I had known him for about thirty years, 
 eager, combative, generous, full of sympathy, know- 
 ledge, criticism, bent always and above all upon the 
 only aim of his strenuous life, his untiring duty, 
 his deep undemonstrative love bent upon the 
 single-hearted service of God. 
 
 In the following summer it occurred to my mind 
 during a Retreat for the Sisters that, as the number of 
 those who are departed increases, it would be well to 
 commemorate them at one Eucharist during the 
 Retreat. I wrote therefore to the Dean, and asked if 
 he approved of our using a special office, that for 
 Easter Eve. He wrote back very warmly, thanking 
 me for consulting him, agreeing with the appropriate 
 opportunity for such a commemoration, saying that 
 he had intended to have provided for the inscription 
 of the names of the departed on diptychs. 
 
 1 He preached at St. Paul's during the London Mission in Feb., 1874. 
 
 2 The house at which he was staying.
 
 222 REMINISCENCES BY REV. V. S. S. COLES 1893 
 
 Thus my last communication with him referred 
 to that interchange of good offices between the living 
 and departed, which satisfies one of our holiest in- 
 stincts. Some day, perhaps, it may be permitted me 
 to celebrate the Holy Eucharist at the altar which 
 is his fitting memorial (I can well remember how 
 he devised its erection about the time when I was 
 his curate) at Wantage. 1 If I am so privileged, I 
 know that along with the sacred words, once so 
 familiar in the dignified utterance of his sonorous 
 voice, there will come to my mind the text which 
 I have long associated with him, " I have set my 
 face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be 
 ashamed." 
 
 1 Extract from " Parish Journal," June 7, 1871 : " We have said 
 matins in the S. Aisle, partly to avoid the dust and dirt, partly to try 
 the effect of a service said there. It will not, I think, do for matins, 
 still less for evensong, but it is quite desirable at some future time to 
 have the week-day Celebrations there. The only question is how far 
 we can safely venture on erecting another altar. It is a matter 
 requiring very serious consideration, and earnest prayers for guidance. 
 Altars are too solemn to be stuck up here and there like tables, 
 according to the fancy of this or that person." This South Chancel Aisle 
 now forms the Memorial Chapel, restored and fitted up for Divine 
 Service in memory of his life and work at Wantage.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE NATAL DIFFICULTY, AND MR. KEBLE'S DEATH. 
 
 THE year 1865 marked the beginning of a crisis 
 in William Butler's life. For the first time since 
 he had entered upon his work at Wantage he was 
 within measurable distance of leaving it. 
 
 The troubles that arose in the matter of Bishop 
 Colenso are told at length in the Life of Bishop 
 Gray, of Capetown. Here it will be sufficient to 
 say that on account of writings which the Bishop 
 of Natal published throwing doubts on the authen- 
 ticity of parts of the Pentateuch, and also, later on, 
 impugning the Divinity of our Lord, Bishop Gray, 
 as Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of 
 South Africa, took steps to depose Bishop Colenso 
 from his See, with the concurrence of the other 
 Bishops of the Province. The next point was to find 
 a successor, and William Butler's name was brought 
 forward on the strength of a letter from Dr. Pusey 
 to the Bishop of Capetown, in which he stated that 
 "Butler of Wantage" was ready and willing to step 
 at once into the breach. This statement was founded 
 on a conversation with Mr. Liddon, in which he 
 had repeated some general expressions used by the
 
 224 THE NATAL DIFFICULTY 1865 
 
 Vicar ; but, as Mr. Liddon wrote subsequently, " not 
 making anything approaching to a formal offer to 
 go to Natal . . . and I repeated your words to Dr. 
 Pusey in the way of conversation, and, if my memory 
 does not deceive me, in order to meet some expres- 
 sion of sorrow which fell from him as to the lack of 
 devotion among the English clergy." But, as it will 
 subsequently be shown, not only had he no intention 
 of putting himself forward for the anxious post of 
 Bishop of Natal, but after his nomination he never 
 swerved from the three conditions he laid down, 
 namely, (1) That his election should be proved to 
 be valid ; (2) that he should be sent by his own 
 Metropolitan and Diocesan, as representing the 
 Mother Church ; and (3) that a sufficient income 
 should be guaranteed to enable him to leave his 
 wife and family at home for a time, and to carry 
 on the work at Wantage till he should resign the 
 living, as well as to meet the wants of the Diocese, 
 which was deprived of its endowments and churches 
 by the decision of the secular courts, which did not 
 recognise Bishop Gray's acts as legal. 
 
 His sympathies were altogether with Bishop Gray, 
 as his letters show. 
 
 W. J. B. TO EEV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICAKAGE, April 8, 1865. 
 
 . . . Touching Bishop Gray, it seems to me that the for- 
 mal excommunication of Colenso, however in itself proper and 
 desirable, might lead to very serious complications. E.g. How 
 would; it affect clergy who without acknowledging him as their 
 Bishop, admitted him to Communion ? I suppose, at least in
 
 1866 BEGINNING OF THE CRISIS 225 
 
 England, there would be a difficulty in refusing him at all 
 events many estimable people would feel it to be so. Unless the 
 excommunication were taken up and endorsed by the bishops of 
 the Church in England, it would put Bishop Gray in a position 
 of isolation. Would it not be better to stick to the Act of 
 Deposition gather the bishops of the African Church make 
 arrangements for Natal and call upon the English bishops to 
 declare themselves in the matter 1 
 
 Almost on the same date Bishop Gray wrote to 
 William Butler expressing his thankfulness that he 
 should be willing to come out as chief pastor to the 
 afflicted flock in Natal. But at that time he did 
 not entertain the idea, and another clergyman, the 
 Rev. F. H. Cox, then at Hobart Town in Tasmania, 
 was recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury 
 for election. He accepted the nomination, but sub- 
 sequently withdrew, and on October 25th, 1866, the 
 Vicar of Wantage was elected Bishop by the Diocese 
 of Natal, but with seven dissentient clergy. Thus 
 the crisis began. A trying time followed. One of 
 the chief obstacles that lay between him and his 
 acceptance of the See was the question whether his 
 election was canonical. He also firmly held to his 
 original stipulation that an income of 600 a year 
 should be secured to the See. 
 
 Feeling doubts as to the validity of the election, 
 he put the decision into the hands of his Diocesan, 
 Bishop Wilberforce, and the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, Dr. Longley. They wrote on January 12, 
 1867: "We advise you to suspend your decision 
 until these important questions concerning your 
 election shall have been completely answered." The
 
 226 THE NATAL DIFFICULTY 1867 
 
 Bishop of Oxford was all along in favour of his 
 acceptance. After the decision had been made he 
 wrote to Bishop Gray, " No doubt, so far as we 
 can see, if our dear Archbishop had seen his way 
 to stand firm, Butler would wonderfully have re- 
 stored all things." 
 
 On receipt of the news of his election, Butler 
 wrote to the Bishop of Capetown : 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Dec. 28, 1866. 
 
 MY DEAR LORD, I received your letter with a mass of others 
 from Natal upon Christmas Eve, just when all our preparations 
 for Christmas were completed. You may easily imagine the 
 anxious consideration which I have tried to give to a subject 
 so all-important. My ties to England are strong and numerous. 
 Yet I dread from my inmost soul the responsibility of withdraw- 
 ing myself from what may be a call from God, however stern 
 the sacrifice it may demand. I have therefore resolved to leave 
 myself unreservedly in the hands of the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury and the Bishop of Oxford, my natural ecclesiastical superiors, 
 feeling sure that you and the Natal clergy will be satisfied with 
 this decision, and also believing that I shall in this way most 
 legitimately find out the Will of God for myself. If they say 
 'go,' I shall feel myself bound utterly unequal as I am to 
 accept such a post, pressing and imperative as are my home 
 duties to go. For the present I will add no more. The 
 Bishop of Oxford is now at Addington with the Archbishop, 
 and I have little doubt that by the next mail they will have 
 settled the question. Meanwhile I am always with deep respect 
 and sympathy, yours most faithfully. 
 
 On learning the Archbishop's and Bishop's opinion, 
 he wrote to the Dean of Pietermaritzburg : 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, January 24, 1867. 
 
 I enclose a copy of the joint opinions of the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury and the Bishop of Oxford. This opinion has been 
 drawn up with very great care, and the advice of several, both
 
 1867 A TIME OF SUSPENSE 227 
 
 lay and clerical, of the best and most influential Churchmen has, 
 I know, aided them in their conclusion. It leaves the case in 
 a condition not, I hope, altogether unsatisfactory to you and 
 the other brave and good men who have so long borne the 
 brunt of the conflict. It seems to be agreed that the condition 
 of the Church in Natal is such that you are perfectly justified 
 in electing a Bishop. But at the same time the soundest men 
 here are of opinion that the late election requires rectifying or 
 revising. Among others, the Bishop of Grahamstown doubts its 
 validity. . . . As far as I am concerned, I am simply passive. 
 I dare not act for myself. The balance of duties seems too even. 
 You could not have called any one with more ties to his native 
 land, engagements of every kind domestic, parochial, public. 
 I have children growing up, boys just budding into manhood, 
 daughters educating, a father-in-law and a mother, both of 
 course aged, yet both strong and well, and keenly alive to the 
 pain of such a separation. A flourishing body of Sisters estab- 
 lished here and elsewhere, looking to me as their founder and 
 guide. Then schools and parochial institutions of every kind 
 rest on me. All this, I feel, involves me in much entanglement. 
 Yet after much deliberation I have resolved that if the way is 
 clear I must make a sacrifice which will cost so much pain not 
 to myself only but to so many others ; and weak and unfit as I 
 am for such a post, I must place myself at your service. 
 
 Pray however do not consider yourself pledged to me by your 
 late vote, but if you can find anyone who seems to you better 
 suited for your wants, or whose name would create more unani- 
 mity of feeling among the clergy, do not hesitate to set me aside. 
 
 His most confidential correspondent during the 
 trying time that followed his election was his 
 friend H. P. Liddon. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 CALDICOT HOUSE, WATFORD, Jan. 18, 1867. 
 
 I have received from the Archbishop and Bishop, together 
 
 with two private letters the enclosed 1 which I send to you in 
 
 confidence, for I do not as yet know what use I am permitted to 
 
 make of it. It seems to me very full and helpful. I am going 
 
 1 See Life of Robert Gray, D.D., vol. ii., p. 299 (1876).
 
 228 THE NATAL DIFFICULTY 1867 
 
 to Cuddesdon on Saturday, and I suppose that after a talk with 
 the Bishop, I shall know more exactly what to say and what to 
 do. I hope that you will think that I have done rightly in this 
 very difficult case, and I should like also to think that Dr. Pusey 
 was satisfied that I am not a ' malingerer.' I had, I think I may 
 honestly say, quite made up my own mind on the subject. I 
 mean that I was and am ready to do whatever it seems right that 
 I should call my duty, and I had gone so far as to arrange my 
 plans in case the opinion went in favour of my starting at once. 
 I really know not what I could have done more, but of course 
 there is in everything so much room for self-deceit that I almost 
 fear that I have said too much. 
 
 I have spent nearly a fortnight in great rest under my 
 mother's roof, and hope to return to Wantage on Monday. I 
 went on Sunday to St. Mary Magdalene's, and heard a most 
 wonderful sermon from Stuart. I should like to tell you of it at 
 length, but I must repeat one passage. 
 
 " The Wise Men were wise, my brethren, because they per- 
 ceived the meaning of the star. They were wise because, etc., 
 etc., etc., and they were wise because they offered incense to 
 Christ. The new wise men (we think them very foolish men) 
 say that we must not offer incense to Christ, but we don't intend 
 to mind them, my brethren," and so on, all said with the 
 quaintest accent and manner. I had a chat with A. H. M. on 
 Tuesday. He "looks, I think, worn, but is, as ever, very cheery 
 and genial. How very good is his exposition of Faith. It is 
 worthy of some old Eastern bishop. . . . Philip Freeman 1 
 is very desirous to publish an annotated copy [of the Christian 
 Year] with parallel passages. He would, I think, undertake the 
 classical parallels, for which no man is better fitted. He also 
 wishes to give the ' motif,' so to say, of each poem, which would 
 I think be very useful. In fact, just as Dante was edited 
 immediately after his death so to bring out the meanings 
 and allusions of the Christian Year by the efforts of various 
 minds. , . . 
 
 After many months of uncertainty at length the 
 decision came. It was founded on what may be 
 
 1 Ven. Philip Freeman, Archdeacon of Exeter, author of Principles 
 of Divine Service.
 
 1867 THE DECISION 229 
 
 called a bye-issue, and it came at a time when 
 William Butler's consecration as Bishop seemed to 
 be only postponed till the last legal difficulties were 
 overcome. But in the course of 1867 a Declaration 
 was put forth on the subject of the Holy Eucha- 
 rist by some of the leaders of the High Church 
 clergy, and William Butler's name, as the list was 
 alphabetical, headed it. The Archbishop took alarm 
 at this, and thought that a man of less pronounced 
 opinions would find more favour with the clergy of 
 Natal. This practically decided the question. His 
 own words, in a letter written to The Guardian, 
 under date 21 November, 1867, are sufficient : 
 
 Will you have the kindness to publish the accompanying 
 extract from a letter received by me from the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury. 
 
 When, at the end of last year, the news of my election to 
 the See of Pietermaritzburg first reached me, the circumstances 
 of the case appeared to me so novel and so important that I felt 
 myself bound in common prudence to look to those for counsel 
 who from their position of authority, were most able both to 
 give it, arid also to assist in meeting the difficulties which could 
 not fail to surround an effort made in the face of keen and 
 intelligent opposition, to win for the Church in the Colonies her 
 true and rightful privilege of unfettered religious action. I 
 therefore placed myself unreservedly at the disposal of His 
 Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. He has come to the 
 conclusion, after it cannot be doubted much careful considera- 
 tion, that some other than I will best satisfy the requirements 
 of the Diocese, and it would be both ungrateful and unbecoming 
 in me to dispute his decision. It will be seen therefore that 
 whatever regret or pain this somewhat unexpected result has 
 caused, I have no course left but to decline the honourable, 
 if anxious post of Bishop over the orthodox members of the 
 Church of Natal. WILLIAM BUTLER.
 
 230 THE NATAL DIFFICULTY 1867 
 
 ADDINGTON PARK, Oct. 29th, 1867. 
 
 I have come to the conclusion that I ought to dissuade you 
 from availing yourself of your election to the See of Pieter- 
 maritzburg. To my mind the appointment of any one of very 
 marked opinions to the See would be open to serious objections, 
 and it would be better to select some one more calculated to 
 meet the various shades of religious opinion that exist among 
 faithful members of the Church of England in the Colony of 
 Natal. 
 
 He wrote privately to the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury : 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Oct. 30, 1867. 
 
 MY LORD ARCHBISHOP, You have been good enough to 
 permit me to seek your counsel in this anxious matter, and 
 I am bound to follow it. 
 
 Pardon me, however, for saying that I receive it with mixed 
 feelings. I had so long endeavoured to look at the difficult 
 work in Natal and the painful separation from home ties 
 and duties as almost certain to be my future lot, that I can 
 scarcely now bear to give it up. I have however no doubt 
 that others can be found far more worthy than I am, to help 
 on the great work of freeing the Church of England from her 
 present embarrassments in the Colonies, and that your Grace's 
 decision is an indication to me that such is the Will of G-od. 
 I have only to ask your permission to publish the letter which 
 I received this morning, and to remain 
 
 Your humble and dutiful servant. 
 
 That the final decision came as something of a 
 blow is evident from Mr. Liddon's reply to a letter 
 which has not come to light. 
 
 THE REV. H. P. LIDDON TO W. J. B. 
 
 CHRISTCHURCH, Thursday, Nov. 7, 1867. 
 
 I was truly sorry to miss you so yesterday. The fact is I 
 had quite given you up, thinking that you had come to view
 
 1867 IN THE MEANTIME 
 
 231 
 
 the matter as settled, however painfully in some respects, and 
 so had taken leave of it. I do not think that you need deem 
 all the anxieties and discomforts of the last two years as lost. 
 On the contrary, your 'zeal,' as the Archbishop quaintly calls 
 it, has really given a bodily shape and active impetus to what 
 else might never have passed beyond the region of aspirations. 
 The Archbishop now is pledged to do something towards pro- 
 viding an 'orthodox' bishop for Natal, and that he is so 
 pledged is practically your doing. I am not sorry, for higher 
 motives than the strong selfish reason which enters into my 
 view of the matter, that you are kept by God's providence 
 in England. You never could be replaced at Wantage, and 
 your departure would have snapped or loosened more sympathies 
 and supports in many directions than, of course, it would occur 
 to you to think of. 
 
 It may be just as well that the struggle with Colenso should 
 not be complicated by a Sacramental controversy, such as a 
 much less shrewd opponent than he is, would be sure to raise 
 on your arrival. . . . 
 
 It was characteristic of William Butler that he 
 did not permit himself, during this long period of 
 suspense and anxiety, to relax his efforts for the 
 welfare of his parishioners. The "Parish Journal" con- 
 tains the usual close inspection and criticism of ser- 
 vices, schools, and the rest of the parochial machinery, 
 the constant anxiety for the spiritual condition of 
 his people, the same expressions of humble sense of 
 failure. In the summer of 1867 when the decision 
 seemed to be suspended, like the sword of Damocles, 
 by a single hair, he went abroad for his holiday, 
 and, as has been seen in the previous chapter, 
 made a study of certain aspects of French reli- 
 gious life. His correspondence reveals some of the 
 workings of his mind on the Church difficulties of 
 the day.
 
 232 THE NATAL DIFFICULTY 1867 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Feb. 8, 1868. 
 
 Thank you for your kind letter. I should have been delighted 
 to have caught you for a few minutes. As your scout comfort- 
 ingly told me, you had scarcely left your rooms when I called, 
 from which, as I told him, I concluded that it would be some 
 time before you returned. 
 
 The course of events moves on so rapidly alas, almost always 
 in one direction, that of diropia and anxiety, that it is a great 
 comfort to compare reckonings, and to feel that those who 
 are like-minded are within hail. Have you seen the admirable 
 answers of the Bishop of Capetown to Archbishop Thomson 
 and Bishop Tart? 1 For dignity, argument, and gentle but 
 unmistakeable suggestion of consequences, they are, I think 
 unrivalled. In a letter which I have received from him to-day 
 he tells me that the Bishop of London writes to him plainly that 
 he is in communion with Colenso ! It is right nay, our bounden 
 duty to act very cautiously, with all charity and all hope. 
 But there is a limit beyond which I, for one, dare not pass, 
 and if this coming session of Convocation do not in some way 
 firmly and distinctly deal with this question, I conceive that 
 action of some kind on our part will become a vital necessity. 
 The time is rapidly nearing, when the Bishops must be made 
 to see the real state of things, and fairly to face the con- 
 sequences, i.e. the possibility of a large body of the most 
 devoted of the English clergy being forced to accept at least 
 inaction, from the absolute impossibility of co-operating with 
 those who trample or allow others to trample on the 'vivendi 
 causae.' 
 
 A very cheerful letter came from Miss Milman to Mrs. 
 Butler a day or two ago. He seems to be making good progress ; 
 but India, she says, is as England was twenty years ago. 2 
 
 How severe an ordeal William Butler passed 
 through during the many months of suspense would 
 
 1 See Life of Robert Gray, vol. ii., p. 38, et seq. 
 
 2 The Right Rev. Robert Milman, consecrated Bishop of Calcutta, 
 Feb. 2, 1867.
 
 186; ADDRESS FROM PARISHIONERS 233 
 
 be known to but few. The outside world, ignorant 
 of his sensitiveness and the tender fibres of his 
 nature, would imagine that the prospect of a battle 
 would be acceptable to one who appeared to many 
 combative rather than sensitive. But a letter written 
 by Mrs. Butler in October, 1867, when it seemed 
 almost certain that the decision would be in favour 
 of his going, tells a very different tale. After de- 
 scribing her own feelings, and saying that in her 
 case the worst was now over, she says : 
 
 But all this comes new to W., and he is, alas ! drinking the 
 cup to the dregs not shrinking from it, or giving way, but 
 feeling its bitterness. This week of his communicant classes is 
 very trying the grief and lamentations of young and old are 
 hard to bear, and, as he says, all this brings before him in 
 strong contrast the exchange of hatred and reviling for love 
 and respect. Depend upon it, no warm weather or variety of 
 scene can ever make up to him for the loss of all he really 
 cares for. 
 
 The hearts of the people of Wantage had been 
 deeply stirred by the fear of losing their Vicar, and 
 the churchwardens had written privately to the 
 Archbishop, begging him not to let him go. The 
 feelings of the parishioners took shape when the 
 final decision had been made, in an address, dated 
 Wantage, Nov. 20th, 1867: 
 
 REV. SIR, We, the undersigned parishioners of the parish 
 of Wantage, having heard the plain and lucid statement made 
 by you from the pulpit in reference to your nomination to the 
 Bishopric of Natal, and all the subsequent proceedings, ending 
 in the opinion of the Archbishop of Canterbury that some other 
 person should be appointed to the vacant See, desire to express 
 our gratification that you are still to be our spiritual pastor,
 
 234 MR. KEBLE'S DEATH 1867 
 
 and our sympathy at the trials which have been brought about 
 by the late proceedings. 
 
 We duly appreciate the many works which have been done 
 by you in this parish during the last twenty years, and we 
 sincerely hope that your life may be long spared to continue 
 the good works which have emanated from your zeal and energy, 
 and we also beg to express our feelings of love and regard for 
 yourself personally, being satisfied that under your guidance we 
 shall be kept from the strife and contention which have dis- 
 turbed so many parishes. 
 
 This address was signed by representatives of all 
 classes in the parish, some of whom had been his 
 chief opponents in former years. A still more sub- 
 stantial proof of the people's gratification was a 
 testimonial consisting of nearly 100, which he 
 accepted, and expended in filling the west window 
 of the church with stained glass. 
 
 In the course of these years of grave anxiety 
 his most trusted adviser, Mr. Keble, was taken to 
 his rest. To the last letters exchanged between 
 them is added one written many years later to the 
 Eev. Walter Lock, 1 author of a Life of John 
 Keble. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Jan. 28, 1866. 
 
 . . . I need not say to you how much we think of dear 
 Mrs. Keble and of you. If by taking duty at Hursley, or in 
 any other way, I can be of the least service to you, I know 
 nothing which will give me more pleasure. I pray heartily 
 that the God of all comfort may give you in this hour of sorrow 
 a double portion of that comfort which He has given to so 
 many through you. My wife joins me in deepest sympathy, 
 and so do the 'Sisters.' 
 
 1 Now Warden of Keble College, Oxford.
 
 1866 LAST LETTERS 235 
 
 KEY. J. KEBLE TO W. J. B. 
 
 BOURNEMOUTH, Feb. 13, 1866. 
 
 My wife has just reminded me about sending this which I 
 inclose, with all best wishes and thanks for your good prayers 
 and all your kindness : nor least for your friendly thought of 
 helping me in case of need in my parish. It would be a keen 
 necessity which would force me to have recourse to persons so 
 much overtasked already, and I trust it will not occur; but 
 we thank you all the same. 
 
 The messenger has not yet come, but fresh symptoms have 
 occurred which seem meant to warn us of his approach. I 
 wish we were all as prepared to part as (humanly speaking) 
 she by God's mercy is to go. 
 
 The enclosed is especially, of course, for the Home. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. J. KEBLE. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Feb. 14, 1866. 
 
 We do indeed feel very deeply the kindness of Mrs. Keble 
 and yourself in remembering the Home and its needs at this 
 special time. It seems almost to ensure to our work an interest 
 in the prayers and good offices of the Blessed. Much indeed 
 do we need them. 
 
 Thank you also very much for your account of dear Mrs. 
 Keble. How like a sweet autumn seems her gradual fading ; 
 if indeed that be the right word ! Pray do not hesitate to 
 accept my offer, if you need help. I have at present a super- 
 numerary curate, i.e. one more than my actually needful 
 number. I saw Liddon a few days since at Oxford. It is 
 a great piece of good fortune that he should have got the 
 Bampton Lectures. I lent his sermons to my neighbour, Lord 
 Overstone, a complete Whig of the old school. He was so charmed 
 with them, that he bought them at once, and talked of taking 
 lodgings at Oxford to hear his Bampton Lectures. I thought 
 that you would be interested in hearing this. 1 
 
 'The "Parish Journal" for 1866 contains these entries: "Thursday 
 in Holy Week, March 29. Our dear friend Mr. Keble departed to 
 his rest. April 6. Mr. Keble buried at Hursley. It was a touching 
 and yet blessed sight to see the gathering of good and earnest people 
 round the grave of that holy and revered friend. The day was sunuy 
 and bright, and all spoke of peace."
 
 236 MR. KEBLE'S DEATH 1866 
 
 REV. H. P. LIDDON TO W. J. B. 
 
 60 UPPER SEYMOUR ST., W., Good Friday, 1866. 
 
 You will be very deeply distressed at hearing that dear 
 Mr. Keble died at Bournemouth yesterday at one o'clock. His 
 brother Mr. Thomas Keble was with him, and read the Com- 
 mendatory prayer at 8 A.M., and again at one, as he passed 
 away. It is only within the last four or five days that we 
 have been alarmed about him : as probably you have heard 
 at the beginning of last week Mrs. Keble was thought to be 
 dying; but on Wednesday she rallied in her wonderful way. 
 But the strain had been too much for him. 
 
 The blank which his death has made in earth is something 
 terrible. But how high must be his place in heaven ! I try to 
 think of this. That he should thus lie down to die beneath 
 the very Cross itself, is quite in keeping with the whole of 
 his most beautiful and saintly life. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. W. LOCK. 
 
 THE DEANERY, Lincoln, Whitsunday, 1893. 
 
 DEAR SIR, Though I have not had the pleasure of making 
 personal acquaintance with you, yet I venture to trouble you 
 with a few words respecting my dear friend Mr. Keble, whose 
 life you have lately written with so great discrimination and 
 sympathy. I believe that there are very few now alive of 
 those who like myself were privileged to be admitted to inti- 
 mate friendship with him, and therefore I desire, before I too 
 am called away, to offer you a few reminiscences of one so 
 altogether noble and uncommon. To do this will be a sort 
 of relief to myself, and pray deal with what I am endeavouring 
 to jot down exactly as seems best to yourself. 
 
 I had the great good fortune of passing the first two years 
 of my ministerial life at Dogmersfield, where the Reverend 
 Charles Dyson was rector. It is a very small parish, but for 
 some time past he had been invalided by pulmonary weakness, 
 which rendered a curate's help absolutely necessary. He was 
 a very remarkable man one of the famous old C. C. C. set 
 and in some ways looked up to more than any other both for 
 his vast knowledge, high character, and slight seniority. Mr.
 
 1893 RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. KEBLE 237 
 
 Keble was his bosom friend, and on one occasion when a 
 difficult question was asked, referred the questioner to "a 
 certain wise old man who lives at Dogmersfield." Mr. Keble 
 visited Dogmersfield Eectory not unfrequently, and in this 
 way I first became acquainted with him. He was particularly 
 kind to all young people, and again and again invited me to 
 Hursley, whither one went almost trembling with gratitude 
 at his intense kindness, and at the same time with a certain 
 sense of awe. The way of living at Hursley Vicarage was in 
 some ways of the same style as Dogmersfield Rectory, and 
 [it was] inhabited much in the same way. Mrs. Dyson and 
 Mrs. Keble were both childless; and in each case a most 
 charming sister of the husband made part of the family. 
 Nothing could be more simple even homely. And yet one 
 felt that there was a very atmosphere of high intellect and 
 refined taste. There was an old-fashioned garden, fertile and 
 full ; a fine growth of trees, mostly elms ; small but cheerful 
 rooms ; not very many books classics and Fathers of old 
 editions, as Savile's St. Chrysostom. Mr. Keble had at that 
 time a very comfortable pony carriage, and a couple of rough 
 grey ponies. 
 
 After that first visit I felt myself at home at Hursley, and had 
 the pleasure of introducing Philip Freeman, the author of 
 Principles of Divine Service afterwards Archdeacon of Exeter 
 and of spending a day in my marriage holiday under the 
 Vicarage roof. Mr. Keble was one of the kindest of men, 
 liberal in all money matters, free of his time and knowledge, and 
 most encouraging to young men such as at that time I was. He 
 was even good enough to look through and help me greatly in 
 preparing for the press a volume of Sermons for Working Men, 
 which I published in 1847. With all this however he was 
 a man who knew well how to hold his own. In the kindest, yet 
 most unmistakeable manner, he could ' put down ' anything that 
 seemed foolish or undesirable. I remember once, at a time 
 when Dr. Pusey's relations with Miss Sellon were much criti- 
 cised, ... I ventured to say something of the kind. He 
 turned sharply upon me with, " You must not say that. Re- 
 member, I am a regular Puseyite." At another time, when 
 staying with me at Wantage, a number of us were discussing the 
 evils of pluralism ; suddenly he looked up and exclaimed, " My
 
 238 MR. KEBLE'S DEATH 1893 
 
 father was a pluralist, and (with a pause) I am not ashamed of 
 him." When I had to preach the sermon at the Anniversary 
 Church Festival, just as the bell had stopped and we were 
 passing his study, I asked to look at a passage in St. Chrysostom, 
 which I was about to quote. He asked me whether I would 
 have the Greek or the English translation. Having only an 
 instant in which to glance at the passage, and knowing the 
 difficulty of recognising the contractions without a little practice, 
 I asked for the English, and received from him a sort of ' Et tu, 
 Brute ' look. He was very fond of the little formula, " Don't 
 you think ? " " Don't you think," he said to me on one occasion, 
 " that the time is coming when we shall have to preach a great 
 deal about the Fifth Commandment ? " 
 
 He could sometimes be even angry. On one of the famous 
 meetings of the National Society, in 1848, when Archdeacon 
 Manning, as he then was, had carried a somewhat trimming 
 resolution, he was much vexed, and said, "It is not the first 
 time that Manning has let us down." He had no confidence in 
 him, nor in any one who acted diplomatically. He felt keenly 
 Newman's article on the " Lyra Innocentium," in the Dublin 
 Review. I was with him shortly after its publication, and he 
 was greatly offended at certain expressions and statements con- 
 tained in it. At the same time he was most considerate of 
 anything like real feeling. Long after he had laid by the money 
 to build the present Hursley church he waited to begin the 
 work for the sake of one old man who had a pew in which 
 he had worshipped for years, and to which he was much 
 attached. 
 
 A day at Hursley was not to be forgotten. Prayers were at 
 eight, always said by heart by Mr. Keble, covering his eyes with 
 his hand ; then followed a meditation, one of the R.C. Bishop 
 Milner's, very short and simple; then the plainest breakfast. 
 Mattins at ten, I think; dinner, again most plain, at one. A walk 
 in the afternoon ; tea at six, after which he would sit in the 
 window, putting together his sermon, or any literary work 
 generally on scraps of paper, backs of letters, and the like 
 and entering whenever there was need into the conversation of 
 the party. 
 
 He was most particular in observing the fasts and festivals of 
 the Church. On a fast-day he never took butter at breakfast.
 
 1893 RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. KEBLE 239 
 
 And I remember how, during the ' Expectation Week ' he 
 would never leave home, but continued as it were waiting with 
 the apostles for the ' Unspeakable Grift.' It happened that 
 some business once called me to Hursley at that time. He 
 asked me to preach, but I of course declined, hoping to have the 
 opportunity of listening to him. There were perhaps a dozen 
 people in the church. He turned to them from the reading-desk 
 and addressed them, as was his custom at that time, quite 
 without note. He spoke of the Apostles waiting. " Perhaps," 
 he said, " you would not think ten days a long time. But just 
 think for a moment. They were waiting for the great promise, 
 the greatest Gift that even God could bestow on man. They 
 were eager to do their Master's bidding, but till the Gift came 
 they could not do it. They desired to preach the Gospel, but 
 till the Gift they must remain inactive. They prayed all day 
 and still it came not. They prayed all night and still it came 
 not. depend upon it, ten days was a very long time for them 
 to wait." That was all, most simple, and yet as he said it, most 
 impressive. 
 
 There are few things that I rejoice in more than that it 
 was given to me to introduce H. P. Liddon to Mr. Keble. Mr. 
 Keble had more to do with forming Liddon's mind than most 
 people are aware. The simplicity and directness combined with 
 the scholarship and great ability of Mr. Keble had a great effect 
 on Liddon, steadying him, and Anglicising him, and helping 
 him to guide others. Also we owe to Mr. Keble the absolute 
 firmness of Miss Yonge. I mean her strong grasp of Church 
 principles, in spite of many forces which might have drawn her 
 into the ' femme forte ' direction. 
 
 I could with a little effort recall much more, but I dare 
 not inflict more upon you. As I said in the beginning of this 
 letter, pray destroy or do anything that you like with what I 
 have written.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 
 
 THE anxious question of Natal once settled, he 
 resumed the thread of his parochial life, which, 
 indeed, had never been dropped. His letters to Mr. 
 Liddon give glimpses of his work and interests : 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Dec. 10, 1869. 
 
 It is so long since anything has passed between us that I 
 feel quite shy in beginning a letter the more so as I have 
 really nothing special to say, and write only because I want 
 to hear of and from you. 
 
 Have you been in Oxford all the term ? I suppose that you 
 find, as I find, that local and immediate claims on one's time 
 grow more and more absorbing, just as, if one's microscope were 
 stronger, one might write treatises on a rose leaf or a fly's wing. 
 It is quite inexpressible how very much more I become tied 
 to Wantage, and simply, as I imagine, unable to leave it without 
 injuring the work of the place. Rightly or wrongly, I keep 
 on enunciating that work is best done for the Church by doing 
 that which is directly given, and I shrink greatly from external 
 calls. Our annual confirmation took place last week. The 
 Bishop of 0. kept on coquetting with it, saying that he would 
 come, etc., then hoped that I would make the ground certain 
 by making sure of another Bishop in case he was prevented; 
 finally did not come. Fortunately I had caught Addington
 
 1869 CORRESPONDENCE WITH MR. LIDDON 241 
 
 Nassaviensis, 1 and he most kindly confirmed, and received or 
 professed a Sister (I cannot get the verb right) the next day. 
 It amuses me in the midst of the world-shaking changes which 
 go on on all sides politically, socially, ecclesiastically, and, 
 above all, ritually to find how little we move here. You might 
 almost return as curate, and find just what you remember sixteen 
 or seventeen years ago. I do not mean that various things have 
 not been done, but the general tfOos is so similar. Of course 
 sooner or later the tide must turn here as elsewhere. I trust 
 not in my time. 
 
 Those two meetings at Oxford and Cambridge simply fill me 
 with amazement. That a body of men, mostly clergy, and all 
 members of the Church of England, should almost passionately 
 resolve on praying the legislature to do that which must, ex 
 hypothesi, divorce their own religion from the education of the 
 place, is the strangest and most inconceivable phenomenon that, 
 I venture to say, any age in the whole history of the world can 
 
 show. And the grotesque actually applauds and rejoices. 
 
 I wish that people would realise the existence of that extremely 
 sectarian sect the non-believers, or rather the believers in not 
 believing and see how they are playing into their hands. This 
 is the religion which they are foisting on future England. 
 
 We are all as usual getting older, etc., gradually but surely. 
 
 TV. J. B. TO KEV. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Dec. 12, 1869. 
 
 Your letters always open a whole mine of thought, and I 
 cannot rest without giving vent to some of the things that 
 occur to me. The first is a very earnest wish that you could 
 come here, were it only for a night. I long to talk over some 
 of these most serious matters with you. You see I live so 
 very narrow a life, among my flock and with the dear good 
 Sisters, that I have really no chance of knowing what the 
 true workings of things are. I am tied by the leg, and Oxford 
 near as it is and still more London with its stir and interests 
 are almost 'terra incognita' to me. I shrink from societies and 
 gatherings and the like, partly from sheer occupation, and 
 
 lr The Right Rev. Addington R P. Venables, Bishop of Nassau, 
 Bahamas, 1863 to 1876. 
 
 Q
 
 242 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1869 
 
 partly because so little seems to me to come from them. So 
 in regard to this Temple 1 business. I simply know the fact 
 that he is designated a Bishop, of course by the Prime Minister, 
 but the arguments for such a step I know not. I take it for 
 granted that Gladstone has condescended to explain himself 
 to someone, and I cherish a kind of hope that a man of his 
 goodness and intelligence in Church questions must have some 
 kind of plausible airoXoyla. to put forth. You probably know 
 all that can be said on both sides. I have not taken any 
 vigorous part in the matter, because I conceive that the evil 
 lies far more deep than the mere appointment of a man of 
 T.'s views. It lies, as it seems to me, in the co-existence in 
 one community of three sets of minds, or schools, vitally 
 differing each from the other, cohering simply by the fact 
 that they are in a State Establishment. If they are there, 
 each, I suppose, has a sort of claim on the donors of patronage, 
 and it is only a question of time when its claims shall be 
 allowed. If a man of T.'s opinions held office ... of course 
 he would be appointed to-morrow, made Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury if a vacancy occurs. Accidentally there happens to be 
 a Prime Minister of (supposed) High Church opinions, and 
 we are therefore astonished and scandalised by his selection 
 of Temple. But if he had appointed (say) Bright, the principle 
 of evil would have been there just the same, only waiting its 
 opportunity to start into life. All our misfortunes date from 
 and have their origin in that hideous Gorham decision. When 
 one has lived through that, nothing seems unendurable. Until 
 that has been dealt [with], we have nothing for it but to 
 look for wave after wave of trouble. And what pains me most 
 is to see how the moving spirits among us ignore and set 
 aside this. Men like our dear friend A. H. M. and those 
 whom the Church Times represents, go on perfectly at ease, 
 until they are told to wear fewer flounces of lace, or the like, 
 and then they shriek and scold as if life depended on it. I 
 never could persuade A. H. M. to take up the Court of Final 
 Appeal with a will. Now the E. C. U. is most anxious to 
 do so. But why ? Because it has given judgements adverse 
 to Ritual, not because it is inherently evil. 
 
 lr The Eight Rev. F. Temple, then Bishop Designate of Exeter, 
 now Archbishop of Canterbury.
 
 1869 THE VALUE OF PROTESTS 243 
 
 Touching the Oxford meeting, is it quite impossible to 
 organise a counter meeting? You cannot be worse off than you 
 are. And even a moderate gathering would be better than 
 none at all. Dr. Pusey, Bright, various Heads of houses, Stubbs, 
 Medd, Wall, yourself, and others whom you know better than 
 I, would surely constitute a meeting whose counterblast would 
 not fall impotent. It is, I think, a rule that 'if a thing cannot 
 do harm and may do it [? good], it is best to do it.' The 
 worst that can follow is that people may consider such a 
 meeting inferior in influence to the first. And if they do, 
 it is possible that this may encourage the enemy to proceed. 
 But the enemy is at your doors now; and certainly silence 
 will not keep him away. I have great faith in those who 
 fight losing games ! It sometimes happens that a chance occurs 
 when people least expect it. However you of course know all 
 about this far better than I. Do try to pay us a visit. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. H. P. LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Dec. 15, 1869. 
 
 Thank you very much for your letter of yesterday. I am 
 tempted to send you the enclosed which I have just received, 
 as an interesting and somewhat typical statement of views. It 
 is written by a really good fellow, in Holy Orders, a Fellow of 
 Trin. Coll. Cam., with whom I had ventured to expostulate when 
 I saw his name at that meeting at St. John's. Curiously enough, 
 from different premises he and you seem to arrive at the same 
 conclusion, viz. the desirableness of breaking up the collegiate 
 system. ... I try and try to put myself into these men's 
 attitude of thought and I cannot. I cannot understand what 
 are the motives that are at work within them. I quite under- 
 stand your republican unbeliever who runs atilt at everything 
 human and divine, except his own wild vagaries. But what 
 thoroughly puzzles me is why men who profess to believe in 
 something, who call themselves Churchmen, who accept our 
 Lord's Divinity and Atonement, should lend themselves to 
 forward the work of destruction and help to break down all 
 those barriers by which faith has been kept alive in our own 
 land. It is easy, of course, to say that the faith can take care 
 of itself. But that argument, fairly worked out, would do away
 
 244 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 with the very existence of the Church. What is that but the 
 divinely appointed Body to preserve the deposit intact 1 
 
 May I say one thing, my dear friend ? Do you not think 
 that it would be well for you not so very much to inhabit the 
 House of Mourning? You have had so very much of sorrow 
 during the last few years that it cannot have failed to give 
 all things a somewhat mournful aspect to you and is this 
 quite wholesome ? Pray forgive me for saying this. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. CANON LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICAEAGE, Feb. 20, 1870. 
 
 I have been most busy for the last twelve days, preaching 
 and talking till I was more than weary to our dear Sisters at 
 Bedminster, Plymouth, and Lostwithiel, and to the various con- 
 gregations and workers and friends connected with each of the 
 little communities. Most interesting and most successful they 
 are, winning souls and drawing love to themselves, and proving 
 more and more clearly that in them we have the true 'missing 
 link' which can bring all classes into one, and train souls to 
 accept the ' sincere milk of the word.' You will think me very 
 enthusiastic, but you must forgive me. My heart is greatly 
 moved at seeing what organisation, self-sacrifice, can do, even 
 with such minute branches as we have been able to plant out. 
 It is fortunate for you that I am not likely to see you for 
 some time, else you would have, I fear, a tremendous outpouring. 
 Well, all this prelude is to explain why I have not written to 
 you before, not to congratulate you, for I really cannot con- 
 gratulate any one on receiving ecclesiastical preferment (even 
 without cure of souls, the responsibility of a high place is, 'a 
 mon avis,' very great), but to say how deeply I am interested 
 in all that concerns you, and therefore not the least in this, 1 
 which seems to open out a new sort of life to you. Very 
 earnestly I pray that in this, as in so much else, you may have 
 the door opened to you to spend and be spent for Him Whom 
 only in this world and for ever it is worth while for a reasonable 
 being to love and to serve. 
 
 I feel unhappy at the thought of your being separated from 
 Oxford, and I cannot think how the great cause will bear your 
 
 1 The Eev. H. P. Liddon was appointed Canon of St. Paul's in 1870.
 
 1870 A HOLIDAY IN WAR TIME 
 
 245 
 
 removal. Is it not possible that you may still retain your con- 
 nexion with it? 
 
 In the summer of 1870 he was taking his holiday 
 in North Germany, and at Cologne came for the 
 first time in contact with visible tokens of the 
 Franco-Prussian War. The sight of the sick and 
 wounded, and the accounts of the great battles, so 
 moved him to be up and doing, and to take part 
 in the work of the Red Cross Association, that he 
 went to the English Chaplain at Berlin and asked 
 if he could render any help. He was referred to 
 the Ambassador, Lord Augustus Loftus, who replied 
 that he had no applications. Finding he could do 
 nothing, he dismissed the subject from his mind 
 and continued his tour. In crossing the water on 
 his way home, he met with a lady who had been 
 acting as chief of the nurses at Sedan, and she said, 
 " We want you to come out ; you will be useful 
 among us in many ways." After due consultation, 
 he went to Colonel Loyd Lindsay and offered his 
 services, which were gladly accepted. He received a 
 commission under the Red Cross Society, and went out 
 in September to Arlon,the place selected for the English 
 depot. In a lecture which he afterwards gave in 
 the Wantage Church Reading Room, he detailed 
 his experiences. He said the collection of stores 
 afforded evidence of the benevolence of the English 
 people, but at the same time showed their utter 
 ignorance of things needed. He was requested by 
 Captain Brackenbury to proceed to Sedan to ascertain 
 the numbers of the wounded there and in the neigh-
 
 246 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 bouring villages, and the requirements of the various 
 hospitals. He found great difficulty in getting ad- 
 mitted into Sedan, where he became acquainted with 
 the horrors of war in the most terrible form. There 
 were about 2000 wounded in Sedan, and an average 
 of 150 in each of the 20 villages he visited. Subse- 
 quently he went to Saarbrlicken. It was always a 
 great sorrow to him that he was prevented continuing 
 this work, which, as he said, really seemed to lift one 
 above the earth, but the dangerous illness of one 
 of his curates from typhoid fever recalled him to 
 Wantage. 
 
 Most of the letters written at this time have been 
 preserved, and give a vivid picture of what he saw. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 COLOGNE, Aug. 24, 1870. 
 
 ... I have had a great deal of talk with Harperath, 1 and the 
 more I hear, the more wicked and wanton the whole thing 
 appears, and the more I feel that the Prussians are justified in 
 all that they have done so far. They may be stiff, perky, un- 
 pleasant neighbours and the like, but there was no act of theirs 
 to justify L. N. in declaring war at this tremendous cost. And 
 they are quite right in resolving that, for this generation at 
 least, the French shall know what war really means. While I 
 write, I wait for the arrival of the daily steamer, filled with 
 wounded, to be distributed here and at Diisseldorf. The 
 Deutz Hotel opposite has the Cross flying to show that it is 
 taking them in, and there is an ambulance of some kind on the 
 quay of the steamers. The quay is covered with people, and 
 will be more so with lint, chairs, fruit, wine, etc. The whole 
 of Cologne is filled with ' landwehr ' steady, stalwart, soldierlike, 
 
 x The landlord of his hotel at Cologne, and a friend of many 
 years' standing.
 
 1870 COLOGNE IN 1870 247 
 
 men between thirty and forty, who are going off to supply the 
 places of the first line, the regulars. These 'landwehr' have all 
 passed through their military course; many have fought at 
 Sadowa, etc., as their medals and crosses show, and they leave 
 at home in farms, etc., wives and children. Many of them are 
 gentlemen, or at least of the better classes, as is easy to perceive : 
 and here they are going off to-morrow to become food for 
 powder, because the French choose to go to war. Harperath's 
 whole body of servants, including a 'boots' who has been with 
 him twelve or fourteen years, and who cried, he said, like a child 
 to leave him, must be off to the war. He told me that 
 for a day or two literally he and Madame were left alone. 
 Fortunately there were no 'Reisende.' Can we wonder that 
 the Prussians are stern in their justice, and that the shops are 
 full of indignant chaff or rather, bitter satire sometimes not 
 very refined, on L. N., Eugenie, and little 'Loulou.' All his 
 dicta are travestied, e.g. TEmpire c'est la paix' and the 'Baptism 
 of fire.' They never forget to give full dimensions to the 
 'corporation' of this 'Empereur,' and all the 'diablerie' in which 
 the Germans delight, comes out in one form or another. 'A 
 dream and the reality,' represents L. B., etc., greeted by Victory, 
 about to enter Berlin. Underneath the whole French army 
 is passing under the yoke. Then 'Vaterland's Lieder,' 'Die 
 Wacht am Rhein,' etc., are everywhere. Harperath tells me 
 that all business is stopped, and well it may be. Two days after 
 war was declared Cologne was full, every one rushing home. 
 One night the Swiss train from Basle threw 800 upon the town. 
 People rushed up and down frantically to find beds. His 
 house was filled with all sort of swells. A few days after all 
 was gone, and the soldiers swarming into the trains. The 33rd 
 went out 3000 strong, and returned in a fortnight with 300 
 survivors. They were all, he said, clean, well set up young men. 
 All Cologne is in mourning. His wife has two cousins in the 
 war and another is off to-morrow. . . . 
 
 Well, my next will be from Berlin. I shall know then 
 something of my future. I could easily give a fortnight if it 
 would be of any avail. If not, I suppose that I shall return 
 upon my steps and find my way home. May the Calais route 
 be open.
 
 248 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 STADT ROM, BERLIN, Aug. 29, 1870. 
 
 So much has happened since I wrote from Cologne that I 
 hardly know how to begin or where to end. I will begin at 
 the end. I told you that I had made up my mind to offer 
 myself, if any use could be made of me, for the care of the 
 wounded, or rather for the care of those in charge of them. 
 I went therefore to the eleven A.M. matins at the Monbijou 
 Palace, and spoke to the chaplain, a Mr. Belson, who has 
 been thirty -three years here, and talks with so strong a 
 German accent that I took him for one. He seemed to think the 
 thing practicable. The Ambassador, Lord Augustus Loftus, was 
 however at Potsdam, three-quarters of an hour's rail from Berlin, 
 and as the matter was pressing he advised me to go to Potsdam 
 and there catch him. He wrote a note of introduction. Ac- 
 cordingly I started at three, duly arrived at Potsdam, and of 
 course found H. E. out for the day. However, I asked his 
 dining hour seven, said the somewhat surly Prussian, who 
 kept the door and meanwhile I addressed myself to dinner, 
 of which I got an ample allowance excellent crayfish soup, 
 beef steak, butter, cheese, and unexceptionable beer for 18^ 
 groschen ! Then I wandered into Sans Souci, and saw the water- 
 works poor and stupid and the old ' Schloss,' and the new 
 'Schloss,' and the purlieus of 'der alte Fritz,' and thought of 
 the queer lots who had promenaded there; and then I went 
 back to 22 Weinmeister Strasse, a very long walk, where is 
 the Gesandschaft's summer residence. I believe that he was 
 at dinner, though I called at 6.30, and that seven was some 
 dodge of the porter's. However, he did see me, and told me, 
 as I thought very probable, that there was really nothing 
 that he knew of in which I could be utilised, and so there is 
 an end of that. I made an offering for the wounded through 
 the chaplain; and at all events I feel that I have done my 
 best. You may think it Quixotic, but if you saw the carriages 
 full of prisoners and wounded, and read and heard the accounts 
 fresh from the battlefield, you would not, I think, be surprised 
 that one should long to help, even if it were but scraping 
 ' charpie.' . . . There are but few, comparatively, of the 
 wounded here, but heaps of prisoners at Spandau, the fortress
 
 1870 NAPOLEON 1ST GEFANGEN 249 
 
 not far off. . . . But there are no rows. Everything is 
 perfectly calm and quiet. The news shops only and the print 
 shops are besieged. I quite marvel at the simple undated 
 demeanour of the people. It is not that they are not interested, 
 but their self-respect restrains them. If you talk to any one you 
 very soon find out what lies underneath. Meanwhile the war 
 slays its tens of thousands, and you see people in mourning, 
 just enough to show that the blow cuts deep. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 KOLN, Sept. 4, 1870. 
 
 . . . Here I am at last, having arrived last night ; as usual. 
 I need not tell you how the chorus from Paderborn here is 
 ' Napoleon ist gefangen.' I heard it first at eight A.M., and the 
 whole line of railway (at least at all the stations) is decorated 
 with green boughs and flags, and resounds with the shouts of 
 boys and men in and out of the train. This seems like the 
 beginning of the end. It is quite clear that the French have 
 nothing to oppose the solid steam-engine-like movement of 
 the German troops. As I felt sure after the first battle, the 
 French are out -numbered, out -manoeuvred, and ont-manned. 
 The Germans are better all through. The more I see of 
 these Germans, the more rejoiced I am at their success. They 
 deserve it. They have made sacrifices of the most tremendous 
 kind, and they are merely obtaining that for which they have 
 been willing to pay the most costly price, i.e. security from 
 a very vexatious and capricious neighbour. It is absolutely 
 absurd to suppose that the Germans could court war. Think 
 what war is to them. It is not as with us, a mere risking of 
 the off-scouring of the nation, nor as with the French, a matter 
 of conscription from which the wealthier and better can escape, 
 but it is an affair which touches the whole nation. As I read 
 in the Norddeutsche Zeitung or some such name, a sort of 
 Government paper, yesterday, in a battle there stand side by 
 side the master of a manufactory and his men, professors 
 from the university, married men, clerks from offices, and 
 nothing but necessity to protect life and land, no love of 
 glory, no desire to add fresh territory, or the like would 
 induce them to go out. They are not ' enfants perdus ' or
 
 250 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 gladiators or adventurers, but solid steady men, for the loss 
 of whom nothing can compensate. It was a cruel and wanton 
 act of him who forced them into this bloody war, and now 
 that he is, as they say, "caught in a mouse-trap," you may 
 rely on it, there will not be "my brother Benhadad," but 
 something just and stern will be his portion. As the papers 
 rightly say, "The French might have been at peace with us 
 for centuries, we wanted no war; but we are determined to 
 give them a lesson now which they will recollect for at least 
 another century." I fully believe from all I hear and read 
 that they will annex Strassburg, and probably Alsace. I am 
 sorry for this, but I am not surprised. If you could see, as 
 I have seen, the wounded borne through the streets on ' Bahre * 
 on men's shoulders, and the lists of dead which the newspapers 
 give day after day, you would feel that the Germans were 
 right in 'scotching' this serpent of France, which has for 
 so many years raised its head and threatened to swallow them. 
 Nothing is more foolish than for the ' junker conservatif ' party 
 in England to hanker after the French, except for the Radical 
 party to imagine that the German cause is the cause of liberty. 
 The Prussian regime is at least as despotic as the French. It 
 is true that one is governed by a king, the other by an emperor; 
 but the principle of government is exactly the same in each. 
 In fact, the name of emperor applies rightly only to the 
 Emperor of Rome. It is the equivalent secular to the Pope, 
 and as there can be but one Pope, so only one emperor. King, 
 grand duke, elector, are all in truth absolute. But the English 
 ignoramus does not take this in, and shudders at the word 
 emperor. Cologne was thoroughly alive last night. Cannons 
 were firing from the Caserne across the river, and the whole 
 city was hung with flags, and brilliantly, if not ingeniously, 
 illuminated. You may imagine how picturesque was the Hohe 
 Strasse in its narrowness and the height of the houses. I 
 wandered about for an hour or more. All the people were 
 orderly ; there was no evil, as far as I could see, of any kind, 
 either of drunkenness or otherwise. Joy was on every face. 
 A regiment of boys with coloured lamps on poles, marched 
 in quick time singing some patriotic song, and the Caserne 
 on the other side of the river was very lively. Old Harperath 
 mounted a fine twenty years' old Prussian eagle, and tallow was
 
 1870 UNDER THE RED CROSS 251 
 
 plentifully displayed in the windows facing the streets. With 
 him I have had much talk. The dinner to-day was at first 
 literally a table d'hote, for he and I were the only diners. 
 Afterwards madame came, and I think five more guests. But 
 he is very cheerful. He invested 5000 thalers in the Prussian 
 loan, and besides good interest, his purchase is now worth 
 150 premium. This makes up for other misfortunes in the 
 fewness of Eeisende. I am occupying the room which you and 
 E. had last year, with the oleanders and view of the Rhine. 
 . . . Whom should I meet in the Dom this morning but 
 the Master of Trinity and Mrs. Thompson. He was disposed 
 to be very chatty, thought that the German papers have been 
 too bragging and exacting. He forgets to make the allowances 
 for a people who have suffered for years under the provocation 
 of France, and who have suddenly, and to their own surprise, 
 found themselves the strongest people in Europe. All I can 
 say of my own experience is that, for civility, if you treat them 
 rightly, I know none who surpass them. They will stand no 
 nonsense, and they have no grimace about them, but in all 
 essentials there is nothing to be complained of. 
 
 He returned to England, and started again for 
 the seat of war, to serve under the Red Cross 
 Society for aid to the sick and wounded, on 
 Sept. 20. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 ARLON, Sept. 23, 1870. 
 
 Here I am at headquarters, going off to-day on a job . . . 
 as ' eclaireur ' to find out what is wanted in all the country 
 round Sedan. I am on a roving commission to buy myself 
 a horse and get on as I can, reporting diligently to headquarters ; 
 I hope that I shall do it all right, but am anxious, as you may 
 
 suppose. They want more men, and I mentioned . Capt. 
 
 Brackenbury eagerly accepted. But at dinner I heard so much 
 of the dysentery and typhus at Saarbriick that I told them that 
 I feared to send for him. . . . The weather is lovely, so 
 bright and calm. The country too is very charming. My 
 route is (1) to Libramont ; (2) Bouillon, where I have a letter to
 
 252 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 the commandant; (3) to Sedan, where I hope to sleep, and then 
 about the country, especially to Donchery. 
 
 \V. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 SEDAN, Sept 24, 1870. 
 
 Here I am in the centre of all the worst suffering that has 
 fallen on this unfortunate land. I arrived here yesterday even- 
 ing, and a young doctor who was with us distinctly perceived 
 and pointed out to me the smell of putrefying human flesh, as we 
 drew near the gates of the town. But I had better begin at the 
 beginning and give you the whole of my story. I wrote last 
 on Thursday from Arlon, having just received my instructions as 
 ' eclaireur,' and having my journey before me. I have now, I 
 hope, half accomplished my errand, and finished with Sedan. I 
 left Arlon by the 10.30 train, and proceeded by train to 
 Libramont, thence by two omnibuses to Sedan, changing 
 ' voitures ' at Bouillon. In the train I travelled with a Mr. 
 and Mrs. Beauclerk, whom I had met the day before. They 
 were at Sedan at the time of the bombardment, and were among 
 the first to look after the wounded. They, with some Belgian 
 gentlemen and ladies, had bought straw and carried the wounded 
 on a roughly-formed ambulance, till better arrangements could 
 be made. They described the sight of the 80,000 prisoners, 
 guarded like sheep, with a few hundreds of Uhlans behind and 
 before, driving them in with their lances if they straggled. 
 Mrs. B. had her apron full of bread which she gave to the 
 prisoners, and was threatened with death by a Prussian officer 
 for doing so. In the omnibus I came upon an American Major- 
 General, who had permission from Count Bismarck to join the 
 royal headquarters. We had the coup6 to ourselves and made 
 a pleasant journey of it. He is a strong-built soldierly man, 
 named Hazen, and had commanded a 'corps d'arme"e' in the 
 American War. He knew no French nor German, but otherwise 
 was a thoughtful and well read man, full of fun. ... I 
 also travelled with two doctors, one an old army surgeon who 
 had been in the Crimean Campaign ; the other, a bright young 
 fellow, also a doctor, named Colley late Davies formerly scholar 
 of Trin. Coll. Cam. We all four consorted together and made 
 a merry time of it. The road went through the great forest
 
 1870 THE HORRORS OF WAR 
 
 253 
 
 of Ardennes, and was very beautiful in parts ; atmosphere as 
 before, charming. When we were some miles from Sedan a 
 spring broke, and we had to creep all the way. Thus we found 
 out what is a town in state of siege. We arrived at Sedan at 
 7.30, and found the gates shut for the night. Two poor young 
 mothers with their babies whom in the danger they had sent off 
 into Belgium, were of our party, and there seemed before us 
 nothing but the woods, in which to this day dead bodies are 
 continually found. However, by proper application and suppli- 
 cation, we got in with such luggage as we could carry, and then 
 came the question of a bed. The first hotel, de 1'Europe, was 
 crammed, and poor madame, evidently worried to death by 
 applications for beds, was inclined to be savage at me for 
 pressing her to find us (the M.-G. and myself) somewhere to 
 stow our carcases. I bethought me of a gar^on to conduct us, 
 and promised him a franc if he would find us a lodging. This 
 acted, and we were soon in the strangest house I ever saw. It 
 seems like nothing outside ; and inside, as the landlady told me, 
 she found room for forty-five people. There is a spiral staircase 
 which saves room, and off it open a regular rabbit warren of 
 ' chambres a deux pieces,' in one of which M.-G. and I took up 
 our abode. The smells are awful inside and outside, and I have 
 just soaked our room with carbolic acid, which a benevolent 
 doctor has bestowed upon me. (We are all I mean the ' rouge 
 croix ' folk very soon hail-fellow-well-met.) I think that the 
 Prussians need only enclose the place for a few days to fill it 
 with typhoid. Everywhere the drains are most dreadful, but this 
 corner seems the worst of all. Everybody must be at home at 
 nine P.M. else he is in danger of being arrested ' nicht nach 
 neun Freilass,' said a Prussian soldier to me when I asked whether 
 it was true. We got a good meal at the hotel, and madame be- 
 came very gracious when she found that she was relieved from 
 the difficulty of the bed. This morning I had planned to get a 
 ' voiture ' and hunt up the different places to which I was bound, 
 but soon found it hopeless. No one would let me have a horse, 
 and the various ' patrons ' were disposed to be very sulky. I 
 caught something about ' autorisation,' and gathered that if I 
 could get a command from the Prussian authorities I could floor 
 them. First I got hold of a bright sort of a fellow, a hanger-on 
 at the hotel, and engaged him for the day; then after breakfast
 
 254 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 started off ' pour reclamer mes effets,' which were numerous 
 owing to my purchases at Brussels, from the omnibus bureau. I 
 got them and the M.-G.'s portmanteau with some difficulty, and 
 then proceeded to the Commandant's office, where my friend 
 hoped to get tidings as to how he should proceed to head- 
 quarters. You cannot imagine greater politeness than the 
 Germans showed us. I stated the case, showed the permit, and 
 finally had the pleasure of hearing that at ' zwei Uhr,' a German 
 architect was to be sent off in a 'Wagen,' and that he might 
 go with him. Then I thought that I would do a stroke of work 
 for myself, and accordingly pleaded the importance of my com- 
 mission ; and readily obtained the order for horses. You should 
 have seen the change it produced on the state of things. ' I 
 might have what I liked, when I liked, how 1 liked.' ' Would I 
 have one or two 1 ' etc., etc. So I arranged to do my work here 
 to-day and start to-morrow for the villages. 
 
 My first point was the Anglo-American Ambulance at the 
 barracks, on the top of a hill overlooking the Meuse. ... I 
 found Miss Pearson, etc., and C. Wood. With them I arranged 
 for a Celebration at eight to-morrow in her rooms. . . . She 
 is to accompany me to-morrow. 
 
 I soon found that no one could really help me, and that 
 I must take my own line. I went therefore next to the ' Societe 
 Fran9aise pour le secours des blesses,' and had a long conver- 
 sation with M. de Martagnac, who is its head. He gave me a 
 list of the villages where wounded are, and also told me what 
 was chiefly required. I was particularly anxious to obtain 
 details, and not generally that they would be glad of anything 
 that we could send. I find that trousers are most required. The 
 shells have torn them to pieces. On the whole the wounded are 
 gradually being ' evacues,' by which it is meant that they are 
 being sent away. Two thousand are at present in Sedan arid its 
 neighbourhood. Some 400 are to go off on Monday to Charleroi 
 and the N. of France. The Belgian authorities however refuse 
 to receive more. 
 
 I took careful notes of our conversation, and went on to 
 the Couvent de 1'Assomption, which a letter to Colonel Lindsay 
 described as battered in and made by the Sisters into an 
 Ambulance. Their resources, it was added, were exhausted. 
 The Mother, an intelligent German from Munich, received me,
 
 1870 SEDAN 255 
 
 and we went over the place together. They have now no 
 wounded, only sick. Fever, small-pox, etc. The place was 
 scarcely touched. The poor nuns had hidden themselves in the 
 cellar, like wise women, and they had plenty of everything, 
 though at one time they were badly off. Cigars would be 
 acceptable, and I sent them 300 out of 's stock. 
 
 From them I proceeded to the French Military Hospital 
 authorities, and met there the first really serious Frenchman I 
 have seen. A boy wanted to guide me to the battlefield, and 
 told me quite cheerfully, ' Mon pere a ete tue.' The women 
 seem to feel it more. I could not persuade one of these in 
 the omnibus that the Prussians did not use poisoned bullets. 
 She would have it so, and the tears came into her eyes when she 
 spoke of the frightful night which they had spent when the 
 troops were driven into Sedan. 
 
 This officer whom I saw at the French Military Hospital 
 interested me much. He seemed thoroughly beaten down by 
 their troubles, yet was quite intelligent and responsive, and grate- 
 ful for what little one could say or do. From him I heard the 
 same story of lack of ' pantalons,' and he showed me the Belgian 
 letters, which seemed to pain him a good deal. Lastly I visited 
 the Prussian medical folk, and made them the offer of a chateau 
 near Arlon, which had been placed at Capt. Brackenbury's dis- 
 posal for the Belgians do not refuse the Prussian wounded. 
 This offer required a good deal of consideration. The question 
 of transport is very difficult, and I am to receive an answer 
 to-morrow. You will see that this was a good day's work, for 
 each visit involved a good deal of talk and thought. . . . I 
 must not forget to say that I prepared an elaborate despatch, and 
 contrived to get it sent off by private hands to Capt. Bracken- 
 bury, to get it to-morrow, Sunday. 
 
 I walked to Balon, a little village close to Sedan, where Porter 
 and his Sisters are. He was out. I saw a doctor with whom he 
 lives, a pleasant fellow, quite enchanted with P., and promised, if 
 I have time, to dine with them to-morrow. This doctor gave me 
 the carbolic acid with directions how to use it. Balon is much 
 knocked about by the cannon balls, and there too I fell in with 
 the dreadful smell of putrefying human flesh. On the whole, 
 I must confess that I am surprised to find how quickly things 
 seem to be righting themselves. The towns will not suffer
 
 256 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 much. The Prussians behave themselves, as almost all people of 
 all classes tell me, very well pay for everything, ill-use no one, 
 do not swagger. There are, of course, stories of this man's corn 
 being taken, and that other losing his wine ; and I see that the 
 feeling of the nurses and swells is on the French side, but 
 I cannot agree with them. The country folk will certainly suffer 
 a great deal, but in limited localities. I have not yet seen 
 Bazeilles, where I am told the whole place is utterly destroyed, 
 nor the battlefield which is still covered with debris of every 
 kind. The peasants alone are permitted to pick them up. A 
 lot of tourist gents are already on the spot, trying to make 
 capital out of everything. The Prussian sentry was refusing 
 admission to two regular h-less English snobs, when I went up 
 with Miss Pearson to the Ambulance this afternoon. She was 
 quite a match for them. They wanted to go through the 
 Ambulance and see the wounded, and appealed to her to let 
 them in. She told them that they must get an order from 
 the ' Commandant.' The doctors appear to be a good set of men 
 (English I mean), kind, intelligent, unaffected. 
 
 The difficulty of the situation is that a staff of workers and a 
 great depdt of stores are gathered into one place for a time 
 they are wanted then the wounded become fewer from death 
 and other causes, and there is little or nothing left to be done. 
 I fancy that Metz and its vicinity will soon want help ; and then 
 will come the Paris work. We know nothing in the way of 
 news. . . . No food of any kind, save perhaps bread, can be 
 got between meal times, i.e. eleven and six. 
 
 I do not know how Capt. B. will look at my despatch; but 
 I have really got a good insight for him into what is wanted 
 here, and especially what is not wanted. ... I am so far 
 exposed to no danger whatever, except that from evil odours, 
 which the carbolic acid neutralises, and so you may tell every one 
 who is anxious about me. And that I cannot write more letters, 
 for my time is fully taken up. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 SEDAN, Sept. 25th. 
 
 Although I wrote you yesterday I must set to work again 
 this evening, and give you my impressions fresh after the work
 
 1870 ROUND SEDAN 257 
 
 of to-day. I celebrated Holy Communion this morning in Miss 
 Pearson's room in the Croix Rouge. The congregation consisted 
 of Miss P., a Mrs. Mason, whom I know not, and C. Wood. 
 Then we had matins and litany. C. W. breakfasted with me 
 at the H6tel de 1'Europe, and I was about to start at ten A.M., 
 accompanied by Miss P., on my journey through the villages, 
 when R. Porter came in. Of course this delayed me ; we had 
 a quarter of an hour's chat and I promised to make my way 
 to him this afternoon, but was unable to do so. He is outside 
 the town, and the gates are shut at seven. Now for my 
 expedition. I made a complete tour round the town, beginning 
 with Bazeilles, which is about three miles south, and visiting 
 Lamoncelle, Darguy, Givonne, Oily, Floing, and one or two 
 besides. This kept me entirely in the district where the great 
 battle was fought, and I saw all the remains of its traces. First 
 of all, the village of Bazeilles is utterly destroyed. It is a large 
 village, 1800 inhabitants, a sort of country-house place of the 
 bettermost Sedan folk, and full of woollen workers and farmers. 
 These people had fired on the Prussians as they drove the 
 French through the village, and every house was deliberately 
 fired. It is simply a village of shells of houses, and the road 
 is covered with tiles and bricks not many of the people were 
 killed, 20 or 30 at the most, which was exaggerated into 300. 
 Near this we found ambulances established in a large chateau, 
 
 under the charge of Mrs. C and the Mother Superior of All 
 
 Saints. The former was busy cooking, and a wonderfully 
 graceful pretty cook she looked, dressed in a large cook's apron ; 
 but not a bit less like the high-born lady. They had forty-eight 
 wounded; had three operations, amputations, the day before, 
 but were well supplied with everything. Pyaemia, in spite of 
 all their care, had set in, and they had lost a good many. The 
 chateau belonged to a Comte de Fiennes who lives in the south 
 of France ; but no questions are asked in these times, and every- 
 thing, to use a slang expression, is ' walked into ' without scruple. 
 We then drove on to another large village, La Moncelle, and 
 found both Prussians and French in various chateaux. There 
 were a good many, 250 or thereabouts, gradually however being 
 moved away to Lille and to Belgium. We distributed freely our 
 stock of cigars and chocolate, and gave, I think, much satisfac- 
 tion. Poor fellows ! they were and this applies universally 
 
 R
 
 258 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 patient and even cheerful. Only in one case, where lock-jaw had 
 come on, was there any moaning. Some faces had the hectic 
 of fever, some the pallor of death ; but they showed us their 
 wounds and the bullets which had been extracted, and chatted 
 about their homes. Nothing could be better under the circum- 
 stances than the treatment they received. The rooms were 
 quite sweet and the beds clean. Generally they had bedsteads, 
 sometimes they were on the ground. We questioned the French 
 carefully, out of the reach of the Prussian ears, and they all 
 had one story that they were well taken care of and wanted 
 for nothing, except perhaps sugar in their coffee or matters of 
 no great importance. Then, I think, some of them said they 
 were left too long without drink. Sometimes we were told by 
 our man, a handy fellow whom I have employed since we came 
 here, that the French had no bread, and so on; but when we 
 came to investigate the matter it invariably turned out to be 
 a thorough mistake. However, as I said, the cigars and choco- 
 late brought many a smile of pleasure, and I think the money 
 was well laid out. We went through pretty nearly the same 
 sort of careful visitation in all the spots where wounded were 
 to be found. In several places they had all departed, and there 
 was no one but the surgeons, French for the most part, and 
 very gentlemanly, pleasant men. One of them told us that 
 the German terms had been refused. He was to go on to 
 Paris without delay. 
 
 The next important place we saw was Floing, close to the 
 great cavalry fight in which 20,000 cavalry were engaged. We 
 saw there 150 French and Germans, under a very gentlemanly 
 German doctor, who gave us coffee, and who, the first of all 
 we had visited, specified certain things for which he would be 
 very grateful. We had some difficulty in making out 'kettel- 
 sage,' but at last I divined it to be a surgical instrument, and 
 so it proved to be. I made him write all down, and promised 
 to send him from Arlon all that could be got. Ale and porter 
 were among his wants strong English, not the light German 
 beer. These men are severely wounded, and not likely quickly 
 to be removed. We found in a cottage a wounded French 
 officer ; his thigh was broken, and I should fear that he was in 
 great danger. He was engaged to a lady, to whom he begged 
 us to transmit a letter which he wrote in pencil while we were
 
 1870 A BATTLEFIELD 259 
 
 there. Alas ! she resides in Paris. How is it to reach her ? 
 His host was a baker, an old man who remembered 1815. It 
 was nothing, he said, to this. People then behaved well these 
 very Prussians but now they pillaged everything. His two 
 cows, his fodder, his flour, all his stock-in-trade was carried off 
 in Prussian waggons. His wife had much to say on the subject, 
 and she brought forward triumphantly her grandson who had 
 gained three prizes at school, and had sold them for five francs 
 to help the family in their troubles. Notwithstanding all this 
 the old couple were cheerful and hospitable, and brought out 
 a bottle of wine to do us honour. We clinked glasses and 
 drank to better days. He told me that the peasants would 
 not have a republic, and spoke kindly of the Emperor; he had 
 been deceived by bad ministers; if he had himself commanded 
 things would have gone differently; and so on. The weather 
 has been very favourable for the wounded bright, without 
 being sultry, and there has been little wind. A large proportion 
 are recovering, and even men who have lost limbs are rapidly 
 being removed. Carbolic acid is freely used. 
 
 As I said before, we passed over every portion of the huge 
 battlefield. It was seven and a half miles long, four and a half 
 broad. The natural situation most lovely as usual in battle- 
 fields ; two long lines of hills, broken, of course, by water 
 courses and undulations, face one another, on which the two 
 armies had their cannon, and between which the actual fighting 
 took place. On the left of the French position is a wooded 
 slope, apparently almost impregnable. This it was which the 
 Crown Prince of Saxony carried after a desperate struggle, in 
 which the superior physique of the Germans told. They drove 
 the slight French recruits, as I was told, like sheep before them. 
 After this came the cavalry battle in the bottom towards the 
 right of the French, in which the Chasseurs d'Afrique were 
 borne down by Bismarck's regiment. Either before or after this 
 the French cavalry got into a trap. They were regularly 
 hemmed in while the tremendous Prussian artillery played upon 
 them. The scene was frightful horses and men fell over one 
 another, and the poor horses shrieked piteously. All this part 
 of the field was trodden to pieces with horse hoofs. The horses 
 are buried under mounds, the men in long level pits on which 
 roughly-hewn crosses are placed. Even now, after all the work
 
 260 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 of the relic-hunters and the peasants (to whom an exclusive right 
 is given, by a decree, of picking up the remains), the ground 
 is scattered with knapsacks and shakos, iron cuirasses, and the 
 like. My man picked up for me the cartridge box of a mitrail- 
 leuse, which I must try to bring home. Except in this particular 
 spot there is not much to see. Here and there one saw some- 
 thing which betokened soldiers' presence, or the movements of 
 artillery ; but I am quite sure that if I had known nothing of 
 the history of the time I should have passed by without per- 
 ceiving that a bloody battle had been fought. 
 
 One of our party the day before yesterday, in bringing a 
 fourgon from Arlon, actually picked up a man who had lain 
 in the woods wounded since the battle. He had lost his senses, 
 and wildly asked my friend which party had won the victory. 
 He picked him up and brought him to Sedan. 
 
 Nothing surprises me more than the rapidity with which 
 everything is falling into its natural condition. Except for the 
 German soldiers and the Red Cross people, there is nothing to 
 betoken the terrible distress of so short a while since. The 
 hotel people seem rather distraught, but the crowd of visitors 
 is enough to account for that, and lodgings are hard to obtain. 
 Tourist gents of all countries are flocking in to roam over the 
 battlefield. This will help to put some money into the people's 
 pockets. M. de Martagnac, the son of the deputy whom I saw 
 this morning in his dressing-gown before I started, and people 
 of his rank, are depressed and serious; but the folk generally 
 prefer, I really believe, the German to the French soldiers. 
 Porter has some terrible experiences to relate of the atrocities 
 of the Germans; but it is to be remembered that he is in the 
 very heart of the battle-ground, where wounded fell most thickly, 
 and where the difficulty of treating them properly was very 
 great. I hear that all the English party are ordered to Arlon. 
 I am naturally going there to-morrow. My Prussian order 
 from the Commandant stands me still in stead, and I have 
 ordered a ' voiture a deux chevaux,' which I hope that C. Wood 
 will share with me. I go by Florenville, carrying my own 
 despatches. . . . 
 
 Arlon, 27th Sept. I arrived here yesterday at six, after, as 
 I expected, a charming drive. Part of the journey was over 
 the ground of the day before, through Bazeilles, Balon, etc.
 
 1870 RETURN TO ARLON 261 
 
 I stopped for a few minutes to see R. P. and his party, and 
 left them a bottle of eau de Cologne, much needed, I assure 
 you, in these parts. I saw three ambulances under the hills, 
 the soldiers were mostly badly-wounded Germans. They were 
 well cared for and happy. One of the Sisters has got typhoid. 
 The road went right through the battlefield, and I was surprised 
 to see so few traces of what had happened ; the beetroot crops 
 were uninjured, though the men and guns went right over them. 
 Of course there were such things as old knapsacks, a dead horse 
 or two, and the little poplars had been cut down by the Germans 
 to make sleeping places, a plan which they prefer to the trouble 
 of carrying tents. One saw these little huts in lots here and 
 there. At one house near Bazeilles when the owner, a peasant, 
 did not understand some order, he was shot close to his own 
 door. We passed the spot, but the dead were all buried care- 
 fully, and there were no sights of horror. The German army 
 regularly scraped up the French from the Belgian borders and 
 then fell upon them, as I have described. We then arrived at 
 Douzy, where Mr. and Mrs. Beauclerk established an English 
 ambulance, now broken up. I found there however a good 
 many wounded, chiefly Saxons, after the great attack; they 
 had those bright, responsive Saxon faces, mostly fair, a few, 
 however, dark. There were two ambulances, and I took note 
 of what they required. Mrs. Loyd-Lindsay's bottle of chloro- 
 form came usefully to hand here. They were out of it, and 
 most thankful. Then we drove on through the Ardennes, the 
 forest opening out into distant views of lovely atmospheric tints. 
 We passed a wonderful pilgrimage place, where the driver 
 assured me that miracles were constantly wrought, after con- 
 fession and Communion. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 SAARBRUCKEN, Sept. 30, 1870. 
 
 Well, I am ashamed to write this letter, for in fact I have 
 done nothing worth my salt since I wrote before. The truth 
 is that the work which depended on Arlon is now coming to 
 an end. The wounded are in course of speedy removal, and 
 the headquarters of the Society are to be removed to this 
 place. . . . The lieutenant, or storekeeper, Mr. Bushnan,
 
 262 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 is a very jolly fellow, and received me most kindly. He had 
 Captain B.'s room made ready for me, and gave me all informa- 
 tion but no work. I must stay here till to-morrow and then I 
 am to start off as ' eclaireur,' taking up my quarters at Kemilly, 
 some forty miles west of this on the road to Metz. This is 
 to be a depot of the Society, and I hope to make it useful 
 for the villages round, which are more or less filled with 
 wounded. I wrote to you last from Arlon, and gave you an 
 account of the stores, etc. It is a strange life, as you may 
 suppose, to find oneself in the midst of a set of people whose 
 names for the most part I have never heard before, doctors 
 young and old, newspaper correspondents, agents of the Society 
 of all degrees, young and middle-aged, all very friendly, working 
 hard when there is work to do, and at other times idling, 
 chatting, etc. On the whole they seem to be a good sort of 
 fellows, with plenty of work in them, not very refined, almost, 
 I should think, without religion, though quite proper in 
 language and far from jeering or mocking, kind and really 
 anxious to do their best. . . . From Arlon I had a slow but 
 not uninteresting journey. . . . At Conz, a lovely village in 
 the valley under the hills from which the Moselle is fed, 
 with the broad river flowing under groves of walnuts, there 
 was a long wait, nearly four hours. The train had been taken 
 off. I walked about therefore with my friend the doctor, and 
 heard the same story as Porter tells, that after two or three 
 days the bulk of the doctors and others who look after the 
 sick grow weary of their work and neglect it. He says that 
 it is most trying and wearying, that the only special practice 
 which a surgeon learns is how to deal with comminuted fractures, 
 and that a good many have been sent out who have neither 
 heart nor skill. Of course he excepts men like the American 
 
 Dr. , Dr. Frank, and Dr. MacCormac. He says, and I 
 
 think wisely, that there should be a committee of surgeons to 
 pronounce on a man's capabilities, and that those sent out 
 should not be paid in advance, but by the head surgeon at 
 the end of each week's work. This tallies with reason and 
 experience. From Conz to Saarbriicken is six hours nearly. 
 The road along the valley of the Saar is very beautiful, and 
 the atmosphere as before was exquisite in lights, quite sparkling 
 and effervescent. In fact, the weather has been most fortunate
 
 1870 SAARBRUCKEN 263 
 
 for the poor and wounded. Saarbriicken you remember, not 
 however in its present stirring condition, but as a stupid 
 sleepy German third-class country town, paved roughly, and 
 inhabited by a rough set of folks, also a longish distance 
 from its huge ugly station. It is not asleep now, but all alive 
 with Johanniter and endless soldiers, an 'e"tappe commandant/ 
 'gewiinclete' carried through the streets, etc. The hotel at 
 which I dined last night was crowded, no room to be had 
 there. I had an introduction to one ' Wassenborn ' next door, but 
 a baroness had 'bestellt' the room. Madame kindly sent me 
 with her girl to her sister named Philippi, whose husband keeps 
 a restauration chiefly in beer and tobacco, and I engaged a room 
 looking very like bugs. My friend here, Mr. Bushnan, relieved 
 me of this, and sent for my luggage and established me here 
 where I am. . . . The railway authorities have lent a large 
 piece of land near the station, on which a builder of the town 
 has undertaken to erect a large shed to receive the stores without 
 delay. Fourgons are to arrive at once from Arlon, and here 
 are to be the new headquarters, from which Remilly, a branch 
 depot, and other places will be supplied. I expect to find things 
 very rough at Remilly, and still more in its vicinity. . . . 
 The room in which I am writing is exactly opposite the heights 
 on which the French guns were posted ; a chassep6t bullet 
 pierced its shutter and made a mark on a piece of furniture. 
 There it is to tell the tale. When I have finished this I am 
 going to walk round the French position. News came yesterday, 
 'affiched' at the railway station, of the capitulation of Strass- 
 burg. I wish that Metz would do the same, but on the con- 
 trary the Prussians lost a good many from a sortie, both killed 
 and taken prisoners, and a lot of wounded came into this town. 
 The French took eight waggons filled with provisions. In con- 
 sequence it is considered that the villages round Metz are likely 
 to treat ill any whom they may recognise as strangers, and this 
 makes my good friend Bushnan a little anxious about letting 
 me go. I have no anxiety myself about it, and only, as you 
 may suppose, grumble at being idle. It certainly was most 
 unfortunate that I missed having the charge of the All Saints 
 Sisters. That was exactly my work. Then one could have 
 chatted with and read to the poor wounded men all day long, 
 whereas now I have to wait for jobs. I feel as if I had no
 
 264 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 right to be, as it were, enjoying myself and " seeing life " while 
 my brethren are doing the parish work. However I am quite 
 sure that it is not my fault, nor, as far as I can see, the fault 
 of any one. I am come just at the end of one set of things 
 and the beginning of another. I expect that Miss Goodman 
 will have the command of a hospital here which is to be given 
 over to us by the . Dutch and Belgians, and then I shall be more 
 in my element, unless indeed, I am at Remilly. ... I am 
 longing to hear from you again, especially as you may suppose 
 I want a full account of Sunday. Michaelmas Day was spent 
 by me mostly in travelling, but I find a little sermon here in 
 my bedroom in a picture of an angel carrying a child, a photo- 
 graph set in needlework, with the inscription, "Habe Acht auf 
 deinen Engel und hore seine Stimme." 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 HOTEL GUEPRATTE, Oct. 1, 1870. 
 
 . . . Things move on so rapidly that it is hard even after 
 only one day to remember just where I left off. Anyhow, I 
 had brought myself to Saarbriicken. It seemed as if there was 
 nothing for me to do here at present, for the ' fourgons ' had 
 not arrived, and until then we could only sit still, or make 
 arrangements for their reception. They had left Arlon on 
 Wednesday, only sixty miles distant, and we wondered what 
 could have hindered them. Of this more anon. Mr. Bushnan 
 recommended me to hunt up the field of Saarbriicken, where 
 the French suffered their first defeat, and Spicheren, where 
 they were completely driven back. This according I did. The 
 river Saar, swift and deep, winds through the meadows, now 
 being mown, full of herbage and wild flowers ; and so far as I 
 could find there is no ferry or bridge except here, where the two 
 bridges give the name to the town. The speciality of the Saar 
 seems to be its power of naming places. Besides Saarbriicken, 
 there is Saarlouis, Saarguemines, Saarables, Saarbouy, and many 
 more. You remember the position of Saarbriicken, in a valley 
 between two ranges of hills. The Prussian frontier extends 
 irregularly beyond the Saar. Saarbriicken itself is not more 
 than two miles from the French frontier. Spicheren actually 
 is within it. I mounted, therefore, the ridge which is W. of
 
 i8yo BATTLE OF SPICHEREN 265 
 
 the Saar, and soon found myself among the traces of a battle- 
 field. There soldiers were wandering about, one of whom, a 
 " Krankentrager," joined himself to me, and lionised me every- 
 where for a couple of hours. From him I got hold of the whole 
 idea of the battle. The French posted their cannon first immedi- 
 ately over Saarbriicken, i.e. a quarter of a mile a top of it (you 
 remember that the river divides it from. St. Johann), the 
 Prussians theirs on the heights over St. Johann. When the 
 French first approached and had their guns in position, there 
 were only 500 Prussians in the place. The French delayed 
 the attack for three days, in which time all the troops that 
 could be collected from Baden, Wurtemberg, etc., and Prussia 
 itself, came down by the railroad, for strange to say, though 
 the French bombarded the railway station, not however 
 damaging it, they did not do the obviously reasonable thing, 
 viz. to cut the line. When the Germans had strength enough 
 they on their part attacked the French, and drove them back 
 over a riant valley, broad and well cropped, in the midst 
 of heavy rain, to a tremendously strong position, half a mile 
 in the rear. It is on the top of a very steep hiD, a grind 
 even for me, with one rough 'pave' or 'chaussee,' and a couple 
 of watercourses. Eight horses were required for each cannon 
 to tug them up the hill. This hill was roughly escarped, and 
 all along the ridge a little ditch was cut, in which the French 
 riflemen were sheltered as they fired on the Prussians who 
 climbed up the sides. At the top is a wood, another great 
 advantage to the French, who found their shelter behind the 
 trees. Four times they drove back the Prussians but the fifth 
 charge settled them. Of course efforts were made, not in front 
 only but round the sides, and it was one of these side attacks 
 which at length succeeded. I suppose that it would be im- 
 possible for any army to drive out such soldiers as the French, 
 so strongly intrenched, with only a front attack. Then in two 
 hours the whole of the Prussian artillery, 300 pieces, were 
 dragged down and up, and the French defeat was complete. 
 I believe that more French than Germans were engaged, 100,000 
 to 180,000, but of this I am not sure. The view from the 
 Spicheren heights is most lovely, over the valley, the town, 
 and the river to the heights on the other side. The battle- 
 field has more relics of the tight than I saw at Sedan. My friend
 
 266 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 the soldier picked up one thing after another, and said simply 
 " Deutsch, Franzosisch," and then threw it away. I have become 
 quite learned in cartridges. The German had paper, the French 
 cardboard boxes; also the French use long 'meches/ the 
 German short, etc. There were little boxes full still of grease 
 for boots, knapsacks, innumerable cartridge boxes, leather belts, 
 tin cooking pots, tin tubes which they stick on wooden handles 
 when they want to roast anything, and thrust them into the 
 fire, braces, bits of letters, newspaper fragments, cooking 
 places, flasks of leather, all sorts of debris. The trees were 
 splintered and cut to pieces. Here and there a bullet was 
 visible still sticking in the trees. It was a strange feeling to 
 wander in the little thicket filled with such speaking relics, 
 and think what was going on there so few weeks since the 
 anxiety, and the fierce passions, the disappointment, and the 
 joy of victory. As I said, it was steep climbing even for me, 
 unencumbered as I was, and without an enemy firing down 
 upon me. One may imagine what it cost the Germans. The 
 field is dotted about with burying places, here 30, there 
 perhaps 47, and so on. Near the town there is a large grave 
 where 374 lie together, among them an uncle and nephew, one 
 a general, the other in the Grenadier Guards, name Von Francois. 
 This large grave has a good number of crosses upon it. Those 
 in the fields are merely mounds hedged round with the dry 
 bushes which the Prussians had previously cut down for their 
 bivouac or, as they say bivac. On the descent which leads 
 to the village about half-way down there is a pretty knoll 
 of trees with a Crucifix not the least injured by the bullets. 
 There was something there to make one meditate mourn- 
 fully. 
 
 The poor horses were all carted together to a long grave 
 near to the town. My friendly soldier brought me back 
 safely into the town, after having cut out two or three 
 bullets from the trees that I might carry them home as relics. 
 I picked up two or three more things which I thought the 
 children might care to have. I might have filled a waggon 
 if I had cared to do so. ... Now, I believe, I shall have 
 some regular work. I am to be general store-keeper, account 
 keeper, over-looking kitchen arrangements, etc. One of the 
 London military commissionaires, of whom we have four, is
 
 1870 A DIFFICULT JOURNEY 267 
 
 to be my man. Dr. , a German doctor of much 
 
 experience who has been for years resident in London, and 
 is practically an Englishman ; a very pleasing, though rough 
 and ugly Scotch Episcopalian from Aberdeen; a couple more 
 
 doctors, Miss , and some Sisters, will form our staff. . . . 
 
 Remilly, about forty miles hence, is a nasty place. There 
 are two Englishmen just arrived, very ill with dysentery, 
 from R. The account they give of the place is sickening. 
 It is the main depot for the villages round, which are crammed 
 with sick and wounded from Metz. We are going to establish a 
 depot there also. The difficulties of getting to work are really 
 very great (1) There is the jealousy of the Johanniter, 
 which now seems fairly removed; (2) the ignorance of the 
 German authorities as to the nature of the English work; 
 (3) the difficulty of carrying the bulky stores from place to 
 place. The trains are uncertain. Long ' convois ' of provisions, 
 etc., are always arriving for military objects, and the passenger 
 trains have to wait for them. Horses are very dear and 
 hard to get, and apt to break down when you have got them. 
 The younger Bushnan started from Arlon on Wednesday 
 evening with seven fourgons. I was to have gone with them, 
 but Mr. Capel strongly advised me to go by train. It was 
 most fortunate that I did so, for only this morning (Saturday) 
 did they come into Saarbrucken, having taken seventy hours 
 to haul sixty miles. One horse was paralysed three others 
 came to grief a man from whom they had hired horses stopped 
 in the middle of the road, refusing to go further, and demanded 
 to be paid for the whole journey. When they refused to 
 pay, he tried to take their harness, then brought a body 
 of peasants to attack them. They were literally forced to 
 fight with their fists, i.e. the drivers, Bushnan, an English 
 groom on one side, and the peasants on the other. The peasants 
 outnumbered them, and took various of their things. And 
 finally entering Saarbrucken the soldiers stopped them, would 
 not believe they were not French, took all their hay and 
 straw, wanted to steal their wine, and not without bribes 
 permitted them to proceed. The fact is, we are in a false 
 position. We are not understood. We are, as it were, forcing 
 our benevolences on people who return our kindness by thinking 
 us officious or fools or interested. It will be some time before
 
 268 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 things go straight. Meanwhile there is nothing for it but 
 patience and good temper. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 SAARBB.UCKEX, Oct. 3, 1870. 
 
 ... I wrote a long letter on Saturday, giving you while I had 
 it fresh in my mind the history of that first battle which practi- 
 cally settled the whole matter of the war. Since then I have 
 heard various details. It seems that the Germans, though only 
 500 men appeared in Saarbriicken, had filled the woods with 
 soldiers who were ready to pounce on the French if they had 
 attempted to advance. It does not appear, however, that the 
 French knew this. The French occupied the railway station, and 
 did not cut the line, because they meant to use it to enter 
 Germany. This turned out very badly for them. 
 
 This place is full of English a motley lot an odd ' galere ' 
 indeed for me to find myself in. Various newspaper correspond- 
 ents, regular old hands, who have been for similar tours in the 
 Crimea, America, etc., describers of Atlantic cables, Great Exhibi- 
 tions, and opening of isthmus canals; philanthropists, employes 
 of the English Society of all ranks, down to four commissionaires 
 with green uniform and medals not the least respectable of our 
 party a couple of doctors, and now Sisters of mercy. We are 
 all good friends together. . . . Last Friday, as I told you, I had 
 not enough to do, and had almost made up my mind to return 
 home this week. Now I seem to have a prospect of real useful- 
 ness and I shall of course stay longer. It came about in a funny 
 way. There is a Scotch doctor a demonstrator of anatomy at 
 Aberdeen a clever fellow, and, as I accidentally found out, an 
 Episcopalian. We soon made friends together, and he rejoiced in 
 coming to my Celebration on Sunday morning, in spite of the 
 much chaffing of . When I told him my intention of return- 
 ing, he said that I should be most helpful if I would take charge 
 of the stores and medicines in the ' Lazareth,' which we are about 
 to occupy in force. It seems that there is always a prejudice 
 against doctors taking this office. . . . While I was considering 
 
 this, I found to my surprise and gratification that and the 
 
 commissionaires would be grateful for a short service on each 
 Sunday morning, and I believe that several of the English con-
 
 1870 WORK AT THE HOSPITAL 269 
 
 nected with the Society as clerks and the like would also come. 
 This would make a tidy congregation. Then to complete all and 
 
 to my great surprise, yesterday evening at 5 P.M. the Sisters 
 
 with Mrs. - arrived from Sedan, or rather Balon, where they 
 had been at work. That work is nearly ended. They were 
 delighted when we met in the thronged hotel passage, having 
 given themselves up as ' gone coons ' when they left Balon and 
 the ministrations of R.P. The difficulty at present is to get them 
 lodged and fed, and also to set them to work in the hospital, 
 which is now nursed by Sisters who, though certainly not enough 
 in numbers, have done their work splendidly. I believe that 
 nothing could have been better managed than this hospital one 
 of many in the town which we are now going to take into our 
 hands. The two doctors there, a German from Ems and a 
 Dutchman under the Dutch Society for the wounded, have 
 shown great skill and had singular success. It will not do for 
 us to make any mistakes, nor could we dispense with the Sisters 
 who are there at work. You cannot imagine the thin-skinnedness 
 of the doctors and sick-helpers. I have learnt a good deal 
 about the Germans since I have been here their great cere- 
 moniousness, their more than self-respect, their immense pride. 
 There is a touch of the Scotch nature in them. Go to work the 
 right way and they will do anything for you; but tread on their 
 toes, and you had better pack up and go home at once. So 
 that the getting into the hospital is a ticklish business. 
 
 Tuesday. Since I wrote the above I have again visited the 
 
 field of Spicheren with two of the Sisters and Mrs. . . . . 
 
 We had another beautiful day, and we wandered through the 
 woods tinged with autumn colouring, quiet and peaceful, still 
 filled with the remains of that deadly struggle. Some men 
 were removing a body or filling in a grave after its removal. 
 One of them took out of his pocket a handful of bullets of 
 all sizes and a Prussian eagle off an uniform. I gave him a 
 franc, and distributed them among the Sisters, who were col- 
 lecting relics to show their school children in London. But 
 the odour of decaying flesh still hung about them, and it was 
 almost impossible to wash it away. We went on to the Crucifix 
 which overlooks the village, and knelt down together and offered 
 some prayers. Poor Spicheren ! it is a little dirty, roughly 
 paved French village, with however a hostelry where I got
 
 270 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 some good wine. How the country folk must have been sur- 
 prised by the rush of those two great armies ! The two nations 
 were afraid to accept one another's courtesy. Each thought 
 that the other had poisoned their food. . . . To-morrow I 
 shall be in the Hospital, there to live while I stay here. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 X CASERNE, Oct. 6, 1870. 
 
 . . . Here, I assure you, my work is well cut out, and unless 
 I am forced by your next letter to return to my proper and 
 natural duties, I feel that I ought not to leave my post. I 
 entered, yesterday, fairly into work. I have the charge of all the 
 eatables and drinkables, all the 'comforts,' so to call them, of this 
 hospital. I apply for what is wanted to Mr. Bushnan, and I 
 give out things on the doctor's requisition. I keep regular 
 debit and credit accounts, not of money but of things (JVaareri), 
 and I spend my day among my stores. Beyond this I visit 
 the sick and wounded, chat a little with them, bring them 
 cigars to cheer them, etc., etc.; and further I have services for 
 the Sisters, and have arranged with the greater part of the 
 English folk here, who are tolerably numerous, to have a 
 service on Sundays. It took some days to put all this straight, 
 but now there is, I think, no more difficulty, and it seems 
 provoking to use such a word to have to leave it. You 
 can scarcely imagine the difficulty of getting anything done 
 above all in my line. You must remember that I am in a 
 position entirely new to me. First of all I am a subordinate 
 and not a principal. Not as at home ' monarch of all I survey,' 
 but forced to be most particular not even to seem to assert 
 the very least authority of any kind whatsoever. If I were to 
 take up the slightest bit of ground not my own, there would 
 be instant confusion, and in some or other way I should be 
 snubbed. Then I have to deal with a very strange set of 
 people, quite other than any who have hitherto fallen in my 
 way. 
 
 . . . Then there are four commissionaires, good honest 
 fellows, who . . . were really unhappy because they had no 
 service last Sunday; then the whole throng of 'freiwillige 
 Kranken-pfleger ' . . . some gentlemen, others clerks and couriers,
 
 1870 STOREKEEPER 271 
 
 then hangers-on like or , then the correspondents of 
 
 the papers. . . . Two or three Germans hook on to us at dinner. 
 You may imagine what a strange life it is, and how much self- 
 control it requires to hold one's own and keep on good friendly 
 terms with them all. . . . All this, as you may suppose, is not 
 to my taste, though it is not bad practice for my temper and 
 disposition. 
 
 . . . We breakfast at 7.30. At 8.30 we go to the hospital, 
 which is only five minutes off. There Dr. Rodger and I remain. 
 I have a room on the ground floor just at the entrance, for- 
 merly an officer's room, hung round with battle pictures, and 
 within it a smaller room, fitted up roughly with shelves. 
 
 The Dutch were here before us, and they have left us some of 
 their stores. Our stores come in by degrees, and I stow them 
 away with the help of one of the commissionaires, a good 
 fellow enough Irish, named Connell. He thinks poorly of the 
 foreigners and their ways, and compares the somewhat slipshod 
 arrangements of this suddenly-created hospital with the order 
 and discipline of a regular English one. Then all the morning 
 the German Sisters come in for cushions, bandages, brandy, etc. 
 We lost one poor fellow yesterday from secondary haemorrhage, 
 after an amputation performed by the Dutch doctors before they 
 left the place. At the moment we had no brandy in store. I 
 rushed out and bought some in two minutes, but it was too late. 
 He died. 
 
 A sentry with bright steel bayonet and gun barrel marches up 
 and down before my window. Nevertheless a good many stray 
 visitors flock in, and as I come first, it falls to my lot to entertain 
 them. A Dutch prediger rejoicing in the name of Cohen Stuart 
 paid me a long visit this morning. 
 
 I got hold of a couple of strong lasses and made them dust 
 and wash these two rooms, and clear out the heap of useless 
 rubbish furniture and old stores which littered the floor, and 
 I am now fairly tidy. But the hospital itself is in a bad 
 condition and the doctor is sadly afraid that pyaemia may set 
 in. The people whom he employed to whitewash crawl about 
 and get nothing done. The stores are very slow in coming in. 
 I feel, if only I had a week of command, that I could put the 
 whole thing into real trim and by degrees, as far as the stores 
 are concerned, I am getting pretty much my own way, and
 
 272 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 setting them to rights. But of course my present ignorance 
 of what is necessary stands in my way, and I find out only 
 by degrees the need of this or that. ... As I told you, I 
 do not care one straw where I am posted, I want only to be 
 of use to those who are suffering in this hideous war, with 
 the 'arriere penseV of helping the English folks to keep religion 
 within their souls. ... I found a fine well built man to-day, 
 a French officer, who is suffering terribly from a wound in foot. 
 He has been two months in bed. I took him a great pot of 
 calf's-foot jelly. He has a German Sister to nurse him, and 
 neither can speak a word of the other's language. Our Eng- 
 lish Sisters all speak French, but the fear of exciting jealousy 
 is such that we do not dare to give the work of nursing him 
 to them. 
 
 You will be glad to hear that the best beer in Saarbriicken 
 is sold just across the road. I have lodged the Sisters in the 
 Restauration where it is to be found. ... I am surrounded 
 by carbolic acid and chloride of lime, and the smell of them, 
 fortunately healthy, is never out of my nose. 
 
 4.15. I have just returned from visiting my friend the 
 French officer. His wife is with him, very lady-like and 
 pleasant. He was ten years at Saumur in the Cavalry barracks, 
 and we had a joke about the windmills. He knows all the 
 Loire country and ('comme on se retrouve') our old friend, 
 
 M. . I took him a handful of cigars. They both agreed 
 
 that the war was causeless and unjust. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 UHLANEN CASERNE, Oct. 7, 1870. 
 
 . . . Another day has nearly passed of this new and 
 strange life of mine. There is not much variety, yet some- 
 how or other it is not devoid of a certain kind of interest. 
 Very gradually I am beginning to make acquaintance with the 
 
 wounded. I was afraid to put myself forward at first, for 
 
 is inclined to be snappish, and I do not want to be in the 
 wrong. Of course I have no absolute right to be anywhere 
 but in my pantry. The hospital is a huge barrack, full of 
 rooms of all sizes. Some have eight beds, others one only.
 
 1870 HOSPITAL ROUTINE 273 
 
 The officers are, as far as possible, placed in single rooms, 
 and I have made acquaintance with them one, M. le Capitaine 
 Sacquet, of whom I spoke to you yesterday whose wife, a 
 very pleasing woman, looks after him, and two others, one from 
 'les Basses Pyrenees,' the other my friend from Rennes, quite 
 a young fellow, sous-lieutenant. The B. P. officer had three 
 brothers in the Crimea one lost his leg. ... I ventured 
 to visit them all (men) to-day, and fine fellows they were, 
 very courteous and manly. They seem pleased to see me, 
 and I shall now try to visit them daily. . . . Did I mention 
 to you that we have 70 patients and probably soon 120 will 
 be here. To-day has been a very serious day. Several 
 operations were performed, and the doctors were very anxious. 
 However, D.G., so far all has gone well. And now the 
 white-washing is going on in good earnest. Also stores are 
 coming in. Yet no port wine has been sent, and our 
 telegraph to England has not been responded to. The hitch 
 is with those wretched Luxemburgers, who are a bad, selfish lot. 
 I am very sorry that we have guaranteed their neutrality. 
 Everything goes on well through Belgium and through Prussia. 
 But the railway necessarily passes through Luxemburg, and 
 they keep the goods at the custom houses, though the packages 
 are all duly marked with Red Cross. My stores consist of 
 linen of all sorts, beer, wine, brandy, jelly, olive oil, extracts 
 of meat, refreshing drinks, filters, slop-pails, linseed meal, 
 candles, soap, etc., etc. By the help of my Commissioner 
 Connell all is in capital order. I have a note book in which 
 I write down all that comes in and goes out. E.g. knock 
 comes. "Herein." A gentle-voiced German Sister appears. 
 " Caplan, der Doctor hat mich geschickt zu fragen ob Sie 
 haben," this or that. To which I generally reply, " Meine 
 Schwester, wir werden sehen." Probably Cognac is the object 
 of her search. " Schwester, haben Sie Ihren Propfenzieher 1 " 
 She always has it ready in her pocket, and I make a joke 
 about its being her "Breviar," at which she laughs heartily and 
 carries off her prize. Then perhaps Mrs. - comes in, looking 
 worn out and pale. She wants pillows, sheets, soap, candles, red 
 wine, also begs for a slop-pail. I produce the articles, open a 
 bottle of beer, pull out my private stock of biscuits, and persuade 
 her to take something. Our worst want now is candlesticks. 
 
 s
 
 274 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 The town is bi'osiered, and we must wait till some can be made. 
 A bottle with a candle stuck in it is our only resource. . . . 
 
 I cannot help smiling sometimes at myself and my work, 
 yet really I think that there is some satisfaction in finding that I 
 can do what I am told to do. Sometimes I have feared that 
 my masterful nature had no humility in it. But I am nearly 
 sure that want of humility is not my special fault. 
 
 You cannot imagine the loveliness of the weather or the beauty 
 of the situation of Saarbriicken. Each night the bright moon 
 shines out of the bluest of skies, and is reflected in the Saar. 
 In the morning it is coolish, and rather dull for an hour or so. 
 Then the sun comes out, and the day is clear and warm, not hot. 
 
 . . . You would be amused at our hotel dinner at seven. . . . 
 The room which is small is crammed with Johanniter in their 
 splendid uniform, with Maltese cross on their breast and em- 
 broidered on their coat, Prussian officers, sometimes a French 
 officer on parole, English waifs and strays, occasionally dis- 
 tinguished men whom we gradually get to know, as Capt. Hozier 
 who is sent out by Government to Prussian headquarters. 
 There is, as you may suppose, a mighty jabber. Dr. Rodger, 
 my Scotch friend, and I, retire in good time, but the rest of the 
 party keep the ball going till a latish hour. . . . 
 
 I am in some difficulty about Sunday. They all profess 
 to wish for a service, and I have made up my mind when and 
 how to have it, i.e. in our sitting room for matins, when the 
 doctor has cleared out, and H.C. in the Sisters' room at seven or 
 eight. 
 
 . . . But whether they will come to matins indeed whether 
 without a real effort they can come is another question. You 
 see in what a quaint position I am. Every one is very civil I 
 mean of the English folk but I feel that, with the best in- 
 tentions on both sides, our lines of thought and objects are as 
 different as possible, and I dread boring them. . . . (Enter 
 
 Mrs. , "0 Mr. Butler I am so glad that you are still here. 
 
 Have you any extract of meat ? " " Alas ! no, none has been 
 sent ! " " What shall I do ? One of my poor patients is very 
 weak, etc., etc." Then I remember my private stock, and rush 
 off and fetch my flesh pot. " Thank you, doctor," she replies, 
 " I am much obliged.") 
 
 Until to-day I have had no chair in which to sit, simply a
 
 1870 RECALLED TO WANTAGE 275 
 
 four-legged backless stool. I could stand it no longer, and went 
 out and bought myself a cane chair for 7fr. It is to be Connell's 
 perquisite when I go. You would laugh to see the said Connell 
 with the German soldiers and other folk. He talks to them in 
 simple plain Hibernian English, despises them for their ignorance, 
 considers them all to be a pack of rogues, though I suppose 
 honester people could scarcely be found, and never for a moment 
 has his eyes off the plunder, unless I am there to guard it. He 
 is a capital fellow, and shrinks from no amount of work. He 
 lives in the Hospital and receives his 'rations.' This morning 
 they doled him out a basin of coffee, as he said, as if he was a 
 beggarman. There was some nasty stuff at bottom. I sent for 
 * Herr Inspector' and we soon had an [? explanation] the result of 
 which was such a dinner as Connell had never put into his stomach 
 before, finishing up, as he expressed it, with jam for dessert. 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 UHLANEN CASERNE, Oct. 9, 1870. 
 
 Your letter of yesterday reached me at dinner time, and you 
 may suppose I had not much appetite after reading it. I care- 
 fully considered wakeful as I am for half the night what 
 must be my duty ; and I trust that the telegraphic message 
 which I despatched will make you easy as to my speedy return. 
 I saw that I could not be in England for Sunday, and therefore 
 I thought it best to give a service here, and a Celebration to 
 the Sisters, and then to start to-morrow, Sunday evening. . . . 
 I am just becoming intimate with the French officers, such 
 good pleasant men as they are ! Poor Captain Sacquet and 
 his wife told me all their troubles to-day, how he had lost 
 everything, dquipement, property, etc., how terribly expensive 
 his journeys had been, and what it would still cost to make 
 his way to Valenciennes. I prevailed on him 'en titre d'un 
 pret' to accept 100 francs, and I never felt happier than 
 when I put it into his hands. We had much talk about the 
 battle of Spicheren. His vis-a-vis told me how he happened 
 to be wounded. He and seven other officers, finding the 
 ammunition running short, and perceiving the importance of 
 holding a certain point for a time, took muskets and went 
 round for all the cartridges they could find. Then they lay
 
 276 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR 1870 
 
 on the ground and fired at the advancing Prussians. One of 
 his brother officers exhausted his stock of cartridges and then 
 rested his head on his hand. This was enough for the Prussian 
 riflemen. A ball broke his arm and ran round into his chest. 
 My friend raised himself to pick up his wounded comrade and 
 was hit on the thigh. He is the man from Beam; name, Hittos. 
 We exchanged cards, etc. 1 
 
 To-day is our first day of rain. It is however very warm, 
 though not sultry. We are now beginning to get things into 
 order, and I really believe that in a few more days I should 
 find a great deal of interesting work. As it is, I am kept hard 
 at my stores all day, and you would be amused at my new 
 habits of business and regularity. You must not imagine that 
 I had the least idea of doing nothing except store-keeping. 
 I only meant it to be a pied-ct-terre, and, in fact, in a few 
 days I have no doubt that I should have had the offer of some 
 
 really important post. Touching , and the difference 
 
 between him and me, the real fact is that he has had so much 
 more detail work than I, and his accounts of the men's suffer- 
 ings are likely to be right enough. I only described what 
 I actually saw in my rapid walks through the various hospitals. 
 Here of course it is otherwise, and here I am in a position 
 to appreciate more closely what the results of wounds are. 
 Nevertheless I still maintain and the doctors corroborate my 
 views that there is not, on the whole, as much suffering as 
 might be expected. The men are wounded when mostly in a 
 strong and healthy condition, and better able to endure. And 
 one of our English nurses told me that in hospitals in London 
 the people in surgical wards are more cheerful than those in 
 medical. 
 
 We sent off six fourgons full of food and medicine to Remilly 
 this morning, and we expect an immense supply immediately 
 from Ostend. Oh dear, I shall have to cross by that way, the 
 Calais boats have at length come to an end. People are very 
 kind and express all sorts of regrets at my departure, especially 
 my ' orderly ' Connell, to whom I have bequeathed my chair. 
 
 lr The friendship with Captain Sacquet was kept up by letter for 
 many years, and in 1874 a visit was paid to Bourbonne-les-Bains, 
 where the Captain was trying, not very successfully, to get his 
 wound thoroughly cured.
 
 1870 A TEMPTING OFFER 277 
 
 W. J. B. TO KEV. CANON LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Oct. 29, 1870. 
 
 . . . You heard perhaps that I had been in France and 
 Germany lending a very feeble hand to help a little in the 
 hospitals, etc., near Sedan and at Saarbriicken. I was called back, 
 to my great regret, by the dangerous illness of Weaver. 1 He 
 is, D.G., quite recovering. I saw, however, enough to realise 
 more than otherwise would have been possible of the sorrow 
 and suffering which spring from war, and to be converted into 
 an upholder of peace at almost any price. 
 
 MRS. BUTLER TO HER DAUGHTER. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Nov 16 [1870]. 
 
 . . . Imagine a telegram at 2 P.M. yesterday from Colonel 
 Loyd Lindsay to your father with an urgent request for him 
 to go out to Germany and look after the wants of the 300,000 
 French prisoners of war there, followed up this morning by a 
 long letter with many most interesting enclosures from German 
 people (of highest class) praying the Society to help at once 
 to keep these unhappy men and officers from perishing by cold 
 and want. The Government act most liberally, but they can- 
 not get beyond what are called necessaries of life in the way 
 of food, nor give clothes and comforts and help in sickness. 
 The Queen of Prussia is most anxious in the matter, and one 
 of the letters was in fact written at her desire. But it is as 
 much as her place is worth to let Bismarck know of her ask- 
 ing English to help French. He hates us. So don't betray 
 Her Majesty! Last night the thing seemed impossible, and 
 your father wrote a line to CoL Lindsay to that effect; 
 specially till after Confirmation this day three weeks. But the 
 letters were fearfully constraining. Colonel Lindsay would go 
 himself (as organiser, etc.), but that he cannot be spared from 
 the work at home. He pitches upon your father as the man 
 for the case. As he justly says, " A man may live a long life 
 and never have such a chance again of serving his fellow 
 creatures." . . . 
 
 However, the parochial difficulties were found to 
 be insurmountable, and with deepest regret on the 
 Vicar's part, he declined the post. 
 
 1 His senior Curate.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE. 
 
 THE year 1872 witnessed the first break in his 
 parochial life. Up to this time he had been 
 singularly free from serious illness, and although 
 leading a life of constant hard work and rigid self- 
 denial, he had never as yet broken down. But 
 there were not wanting symptoms of a change, and 
 those who watched him knew that his constitution, 
 however hardy and vigorous it might be, could not 
 stand the long-continued strain with impunity. He 
 was undoubtedly on the brink of an illness when 
 an accident abruptly put a stop to his work. On 
 the 24th July he was thrown out of his pony carriage 
 in Wantage, and received a serious injury to the 
 spine, the effects of which he felt to the end of 
 his life. He had to lie on his back for six months, 
 and the doctors afterwards said that this enforced 
 rest was probably, humanly speaking, the saving 
 of his life, or at least the means of averting a com- 
 plete break-down of the nervous system. The fol- 
 lowing letter, written by him from his sick-bed, is 
 eminently characteristic :
 
 1872 ENFORCED REST 279 
 
 To THE EDITOR OF THE "READING MERCURY." 
 
 SIR, In your account of the accident which befell me on 
 Wednesday last I am said "to have jumped, or been thrown 
 out" of the carriage in which I was. Permit me to say I was 
 thrown out, and on no consideration would I have jumped out ; 
 and, lying here helpless, I am glad to have the opportunity of 
 doing good to my fellow-creatures by pointing to my own case 
 as an advantage of the former course. At the place where I 
 fell, a few pounds more impetus, just that which a spring would 
 have given, would have rendered my injuries very serious, if 
 not fatal ; whereas now, by proper care, and I need not add, 
 by the mercy of God, I trust in no very long time to be able 
 to return to my duties with " mens sana in corpore sano." 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, July 27th, 1872. 
 
 A little later lie was moved to Brighton, and 
 thence wrote : 
 
 W. J. B. TO MRS. WlLKINS. 1 
 
 LEE HOUSE, BRIGHTON, Oct. 16, 1872. 
 
 MY DEAR CAROLINE, If loving words could mend one's 
 bones, I ought, after your kind and welcome letter of this 
 morning, to be quite strong and well. It gave me great 
 pleasure to read it, and to hear about James, and the children, 
 and yourself, and the parish generally. 
 
 You want to know how I am and what I can do. I am very 
 much better in my general health, but my back is not right. 
 The doctor here has discovered that one of the joints of the 
 spine is forced, by the violence of the blow which I received 
 from the back of the carriage, slightly out of its place. This 
 is the cause of my not improving; and unless it can be put 
 right the consequences will be serious. He speaks however 
 very confidently of curing me in about three months. Mean- 
 while I have to lie on a board from morning till night, and I 
 assure you that I am becoming quite used to it. You know 
 that I always was a lazy man, and now I can indulge myself. 
 
 l The daughter and wife of Wantage tradesmen, who had been 
 brought up under the Vicar's teaching, and for whom he always 
 felt a warm friendship.
 
 280 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE 1872- 
 
 I get up to breakfast with Mrs. Butler, take a quarter of an 
 hour's walk in the garden, lie on my board till luncheon time, 
 and then have a drive for a couple of hours (generally along 
 the cliff by the seaside), then to my board again. I am never 
 allowed to sit, except at meals ; and thus I have to hold this 
 paper on which I write over my head, and write up instead of 
 down, which is rather tiring work. . . . Now, I think, I 
 have told you all. I need not say to you how much you are 
 all in my thoughts and prayers. I am not sorry to be obliged 
 to [remember?] that all real good work is the work of God 
 Himself, though He makes use in His wisdom of poor weak 
 sinful men like me, and He can and will carry it on (now that 
 I am disabled) by His own almighty power. I am most thankful 
 to have such good [accounts?] of everything. . . . Your 
 faithful friend and pastor, WILLIAM BUTLER. 
 
 He returned to Wantage on January 24th, 1873, 
 and gradually resumed the full swing of work, 
 though he felt more and more that the burden of 
 the parish was overtaxing his strength ; and he 
 foresaw that a time was coming when it must be 
 laid down. Yet the " Parish Journal " shows no signs 
 of abated vigour or weakened interest. The classes, 
 the close inspection of the school, the assiduous 
 visiting of the parishioners, all went on as in the 
 years before the accident ; while the growth of the 
 Sisterhood brought with it greatly increased work 
 for its founder and guide. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. CANON LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICAKAGE, May 17, 1873. 
 
 In the stupidity of my nature I had not perceived that the 
 Sunday on which you kindly wish me to preach at St. Paul's 
 is the last Sunday in Advent. Would it be possible to commute 
 it? The second or third Sunday would suit me very well. 
 But I do not like, if it can be avoided, to omit my annual
 
 i88o HONORARY CANON 281 
 
 shout at the people here about keeping Christmas rightly. 
 Our folk need continued prodding to keep them up to the 
 mark. I have read the debate in Convocation on confession, 
 and I think that it might have been worse. The article in 
 the Times is characteristically unfair, and does not honestly 
 represent what took place. As for stopping the use of con- 
 fession, that is impossible. It is now, like Christianity in 
 the early days, in the forum and everywhere, and sooner or 
 later, the bishops will be forced to admit this. . . . When 
 
 people like and go to confession, practically the game is 
 
 won. . . . 
 
 Bishop Mackarness had made him an Honorary 
 Canon of Christ Church in 1872, a preferment which 
 he valued very highly, and on 21st February, 1874, 
 he received the first public token of the appreciation 
 with which he was regarded by the clergy of the 
 diocese. He was elected Proctor in Convocation. 
 When asked if he would stand, he stipulated that 
 he should not have personally to canvass any of his 
 clerical brethren. The Rev. W. G. Sawyer, Vicar of 
 Taplow, has given an account of the circumstances 
 of the election : 
 
 It may be interesting to record the circumstances under 
 which the Vicar, as we always loved to call him, was elected 
 as Proctor to Convocation for the diocese of Oxford. His 
 election was a cause of much pleasure to him, for two reasons, 
 viz., because it opened out to him a new field of usefulness, 
 and also because election to Convocation is the only public 
 way in which the clergy of a diocese can show their regard 
 for one of their number. It having been announced that Dr. 
 Leighton, Warden of All Souls, did not intend to offer himself 
 for re-election as Proctor, the Rev. Edward Elton, then vicar 
 of Wheatley, now rector of Sherington, wrote to me as an 
 old Wantage curate, asking what I thought about Butler being 
 put forward as a candidate for the vacant Proctorship. " This 
 step Mr. Elton took, not as being an intimate friend of the
 
 282 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE 1872- 
 
 Vicar of Wantage, but under a deep and pressing sense of 
 the work he was doing at Wantage." (These are Mr. Elton's 
 own words.) The idea pleased me very much, and I felt that 
 if we could elect Butler it would show our appreciation of 
 what he had done, and that it would be a great gain to the 
 diocese. Mr. Elton and I talked the matter over, and it was 
 agreed between us that I should write to a number of repre- 
 sentative men in different parts of the diocese, asking whether 
 they would be disposed to support the Vicar of Wantage if 
 he was proposed. It was fully recognised from the first that 
 he would not be elected without a contest ; for there still 
 existed at that time, what now seems to us so strange, the 
 idea that Butler was a man of extreme opinions, and that 
 notwithstanding his great work at Wantage which those who 
 looked at it from the outside could not understand he was 
 not to be trusted as an English Churchman. This is a very 
 curious fact. We soon found that if he was proposed, he 
 would be largely supported. Meeting Bishop Mackarness I 
 told him what we meant to do; his answer was, "then you 
 will have a fight," to which I replied, "we know that, but 
 we do not mind." A large committee was formed to promote 
 Butler's election, of which Rev. W. W. Jones, Fellow of St. 
 John's (now Metropolitan of Capetown), the late Canon 
 Freeling, Fellow of Merton (who succeeded Butler as Proctor), 
 and myself, were the secretaries. Our meetings were held in 
 Mr. Jones' rooms at St. John's, and the diocese was thoroughly 
 canvassed. We soon found that a storm was rising, and Mr. 
 Burgon, Fellow of Oriel, and Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford (after- 
 wards Dean of Chichester), was proposed as a candidate in 
 opposition to Butler. Many hard things were said, and there 
 was considerable excitement in the diocese. On the morning 
 of the election Mr. Burgon's committee made the proposal 
 that both candidates should be withdrawn, and that all should 
 unite in supporting Rev. A. P. Purey Gust, Vicar of St. Mary's, 
 Reading (now Dean of York). Some of us felt that hard 
 and unfair things had been said about Butler, and we refused 
 to withdraw his name. There was a very large meeting of 
 the clergy of the diocese in the Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford 
 on the day of the election. Canon Charles Lloyd was re-elected 
 unanimously, and Butler was proposed by Mr. Ridley, Rector of
 
 i88o PROCTOR IN CONVOCATION 283 
 
 Hambledon, and seconded by Mr. Clutterbuck, Vicar of Long 
 Wittenham. He was elected by a very substantial majority. 
 Mr. Burgon wrote a very strong and angry letter to the 
 Times, complaining that Butler had been put forward in a 
 hasty way, and that the diocese was taken by surprise ; but 
 the letter was written in complete ignorance of the true state 
 of things. 
 
 It is interesting to bear in mind that Butler had been only 
 a short time in Convocation when there was a great change 
 in the opinions of his opponents. He very soon won their 
 confidence, as he did of all those who really knew him ; and 
 I well remember his telling me that he had lately met one, 
 well known to both of us, who had opposed his election more 
 strongly than perhaps any one in the diocese, who said, "So 
 far as I am concerned you will never be opposed again, and 
 you may remain Proctor as long as you like." 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON TO W. J. B. 
 
 CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, February 21, 1874. 
 
 I was sorry to miss you when you called at my rooms this 
 morning. But, instead of going out for a walk, I went to the 
 Sheldonian Theatre, and heard all the proceedings there this 
 afternoon. 1 And the result gave me more pleasure than I can 
 well say, alike on public and private grounds. As the schoolmen 
 would say, it was, both positively and negatively, good. . . . 
 And positively, because, not to add to all that was said in the 
 theatre to-day of a more delicate character, such an independent 
 public interest as this is what you have long seemed, without 
 seeking, to want as the complement and crown to your work ; 
 and it will, I hope and expect, open the way to other things, at 
 any rate to opportunities for influencing the public action of the 
 Church, which will be reassuring to persons like myself who 
 watch the proceedings of Convocation with some anxiety. And 
 it will be, I hope, not other than welcome to you. 
 
 Sometimes too, I trust, that your London duties may coincide 
 with my times of residence, and that we may get the incidental 
 advantage, if not of entertaining, at any rate of seeing you more 
 frequently than has been the case in the last few years. . . . 
 1 The election of the Proctors in Convocation for the diocese.
 
 284 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE 1872- 
 
 I had almost forgotten to thank you for my share of the great 
 obligation which the D. and C. of St. Paul's has incurred by your 
 recent mission work in the cathedral. May God bless it to many 
 souls ! 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. W. G. SAWYER. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, March 1, 1874. 
 
 I do not feel as if I had half thanked you for all your great 
 kindness, and hard work on my behalf. I can honestly say that 
 I value your affection, and that of so many others, far more than 
 the actual success which came of it. I believe that if I had 
 foreseen how very serious a matter it would become, I should not 
 have ventured to allow myself to be put in nomination. If we 
 had been beaten, I have little doubt that we should have had 
 leading articles on the text in more than one newspaper. They 
 would have represented it as a sign of the inherent soundness of 
 the Church, shown in the spewing forth of an obnoxious and 
 dangerous faction. It was, beyond all comparison, the most 
 important of the Proctorial elections. AVhat we have got to 
 fight for is liberty and recognition. The appointment of men 
 like Liddon and King to high positions is one great step towards 
 this, and the Oxford election for Proctors is another. . . . Now 
 I hope to be able to be of a little service in the work of reforming 
 Convocation and making it what it ought to be, of real value to 
 the Church. Strange to say, so long ago as 1841 I had set my 
 heart to see Convocation once more in action. I have a note in 
 one of my books on the subject written at that time. It seemed 
 to me that a Church without a governing body must get into 
 messes, and Convocation seemed the natural Church council. I 
 got what information I could from Vincent's father, who was 
 Chapter clerk to Westminster. Then came the Bishop of Oxford's 
 vigorous and wily efforts to resuscitate it ; and now the ' sleep- 
 ing beauty' is awake, and needs only to be taught how to move. 
 I hope that the enemy will now be quiet, and leave me in 
 peace. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. E. ELTON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, March 9, 1874. 
 
 MY DEAR MR. ELTON, I have been so much occupied since 
 Feb. 21 that I have been unable before this to write to you to
 
 i88o LETTER TO MISS YONGE 285 
 
 thank you for the kindness you have shown me, and the trouble 
 which you took in my behalf in regard to the election of Proctors. 
 I should certainly not have suggested my own name for such an 
 office, nor did I in the least expect to be elected. And this 
 makes me feel the more beholden to those who were good 
 enough to think well of me, and earnest enough to carry the 
 matter to a successful issue. I trust with all my heart that 
 I may not disappoint you. At present it seems to me that there 
 is little to be done until Convocation can be placed on a sounder 
 footing and made more really representative, and therefore more 
 trusted by both clergy and laity. I mean, therefore, to keep as 
 much as possible out of the somnolent nebulous debates with 
 which the columns of The Guardian teem, and to try to work 
 towards reform. . . . 
 
 Among the Dogmersfield and Hursley circle of 
 friends was Miss Charlotte Yonge, who soon became 
 a friend of their friends at Wantage. Letters passed 
 occasionally between her and the Vicar. 
 
 W. J. B. TO Miss C. M. YONGE. 
 
 LEE HOUSE, BRIGHTON, Aug. 16, 1870. 
 
 MY DEAR CHARLOTTE, Emma some time since asked me 
 some question in your behalf connected with TAU in Ezekiel. I 
 was very busy then, and I fear did not quite grasp the point 
 of it. Since I have been here I have looked up all that I 
 believe is to be said on the subject, and it amounts to this. 
 The fathers almost universally accept the Tau as the sign of the 
 Cross, foreshadowing, as the Paschal Lamb foreshadowed the Lamb 
 of God, the Cross itself. The present fi or Tau is, they say, not 
 the original form of the letter. Before the time of Ezra the 
 form of it was T, i.e. the Greek Tau and the Latin also. Some 
 Syrian versions actually translate " Mark with the Cross." Of 
 course, Rev. vii. 3, etc., is the exact counterpart to Ezek. ix. It 
 is maintained by Cornelius a Lapide that T was marked in the 
 heart of the god Serapis as a sign denoting future life. Various 
 other explanations have been given that it is the first letter of 
 p " thou shalt live," or CP " innocent," etc., but it seems to
 
 286 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE 1872- 
 
 me that the other is right. I am here till Thursday with my 
 mother and sister, en route to Dauphine, i.e. I, not they. I have 
 never seen La Grande Chartreuse, and now that I am baulked of 
 Ober Ammergau, I thought that I could pick up something there. 
 However, this terrible war makes movements of this kind 
 uncertain, and I hardly know what will become of me for the 
 next three weeks. How strange it is to have so wonderful a 
 duel at one's doors, and to feel so utterly careless as to which 
 prevails ! Of course, abstractedly, one would wish well to 
 France ; but the Secret Treaty, and the insufficiency of the cause 
 of war, neutralise this feeling in this present instance. But the 
 tremendous probable issues take away one's breath. One can 
 but gaze and pray, as in some frightful storm. . . . Have 
 you read the life of Pere Besson ? 
 
 Miss Yonge gives her impressions of Wantage 
 and its Vicar : 
 
 I had heard much about Wantage before I saw it, from the 
 inhabitants of Dogmersfield Rectory, where both Mr. and Mrs. 
 Butler had been almost like a son and daughter. There is a 
 sermon of Newman's on St. Ambrose and his influence on St. 
 Augustine, showing how many of the greatest and most active 
 workers have felt the influence of quiet, hidden saints; and 
 what the Rev. Charles Dyson, his wife, and his sister Mary 
 Anne, were to many, and especially to their curates, might be 
 cited as an instance. 
 
 Owing to bad health, there was an air of venerable age about 
 Mr. Dyson even at Oxford, for it was a joke that the first time 
 they met, when Mr. Keble had just gained his scholarship at 
 Corpus at fourteen, Mr. Dyson thought, " Here are boys coming 
 in to spoil all our comfort " ; and Mr. Keble thought, " Here 
 is one of the old dons I have heard of." But there was soon 
 an intensely warm friendship between them, and likewise with 
 the future judge, John Taylor Coleridge; and the wisdom of 
 Mr. Dyson was always referred to, as in course of time the 
 brilliant appreciation, and the constant sympathy and good 
 sense of Mrs. and Miss Dyson. 
 
 The latter had a most remarkable mixture of enthusiastic 
 idealism and practical sense ; and in the early days of Dogmers- 
 field Rectory, when all was fresh and they were just entering
 
 i88o MISS YONGE'S RECOLLECTIONS 287 
 
 on the work of a country parish, so small in population as to 
 be readily workable, and with a lady of the manor who was 
 a model landlord after the notions of those times, there was 
 much that was bright and helpful. The Tracts for the Times 
 were disseminating principles, and accounts of their influence 
 came in; while work in the same direction was done by zeal- 
 ously instructing the cottage children and by writing, among a 
 conclave of friends, a number of books adapted for their use, 
 and those of young people of the higher class. Some of the 
 earlier volumes of the Magazine for the Young thoroughly reflect 
 the parish treatment, and the enjoyment of it, shared by the 
 future Mrs. Butler and her sister. Among these friends the 
 translations from Fouque were undertaken, Sintram, translated 
 by Mrs. Butler, being a book that has told deeply on many 
 minds. I think Mr. Butler wrote a review of these and of 
 Fouque's life in the British Critic, or Christian Remembrancer. 
 
 Miss Dyson used to relate how the offer of Wantage was 
 accepted with the wish that Mr. Butler could find a wise old 
 curate, not to work, but to advise. Not that his vigorous nature 
 needed direction or stimulus. It was the time of fresh renova- 
 tion in the Church, and of experiments. This is not the place 
 to tell how they were begun. When I first knew Wantage the 
 principal improvements were already established, and nothing 
 struck me so much as the zest, life, and spirit which pervaded 
 everything. The early service, the merry breakfast, the schools, 
 the parish visiting, the mid-day dinner with the curates, the 
 various claims on the afternoon, the classes (for pupil teachers, 
 for communicants, male or female on different days), the even- 
 ing visits to parishioners, so as to see the men or boys; the 
 evensong, with a sermon twice a week; all concluded by a 
 supper as lively as the former meals had ben ; all came in 
 quick succession, and there was something brilliant and some- 
 times quaint about all. 
 
 Once I had the pleasure of listening to a lesson to the pupil 
 teachers. They were numerous, and their class was a regular 
 preparation for Training Colleges, and, as diocesan examinations 
 and syllabuses had not begun, a teacher had more choice of 
 subjects. This lesson was on the last chapter of the Epistle 
 to the Philippians, and I remember especially the dwelling on 
 the word crown in its distinctive meaning as the crown of
 
 :55 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE i$-2- 
 
 acbievement, not the diadem of royalty. Also the moral deduced 
 from the message to Euodias and Syntyehe of the harm good 
 women do to a holy cause by disagreement. The beginning of 
 his teaching of these girls was the enforcing of undivided atten- 
 tion, and of good hand-writing. 'The Vicar' could be very 
 sharp where these failed ' faineant ' spirits fainted, strong ones 
 rose into enthusiastic affection and energetic work, and admirable 
 persons were the result. 
 
 Once too, as I came down stairs, the study door was open, 
 and I had a glimpse of the elder men's communicant class. They 
 were fine old country men's heads, and I told the Vicar that they 
 looked like Conscript Fathers, which amused him very much. 
 
 The schools were in admirable order, from the infant* upwards, 
 and thoroughly well taught and grounded in religious subjects as 
 well as in secular. But Mr. Butler laid great stress on the 
 work upon growing lads and kisses, holding that the great matter 
 was to impress them and keep them in hand, at a time when 
 their characters were forming and their experience beginning. 
 
 The vicarage is before my mind the mullioned windows of 
 the dining-room, festooned with creepers; a shady walk lead- 
 ing to the churchyard, bordered with limes, and skirting a lawn. 
 It was a place of general hospitality for gentle and for 
 simple, where endless deep discussions and many merry jokes 
 might go on among old and young, specially after supper when 
 the day's work was done, and its humours could be related. For 
 playfulness was a great element in the household, and Miss 
 Dyson, who loved it well, used to say that Mrs. Butler's strong 
 sense of the ridiculous 1 had been a great safeguard against eccen- 
 tricities of ritual, when so much was experimental and curates 
 were hot-headed and theoreticaL 
 
 There certainly was an uncompromising contempt of nonsense, 
 and therewith of unreal sentiment; and there were some who 
 could not stand the ordeal of irony. The atmosphere was a 
 good deal like a brisk frosty morning, excellent and enjoyable 
 to the active and energetic, but a severe test to the weaker, 
 or to those who thought charity akin to indifference to evil. 
 Simple folly was borne with, humbug never tolerated. 
 
 Bishop Samuel Wilberforce once said (in joke) that at Wantage 
 there was no rest day or night. Everything was done with 
 1 Inherited doubtless with her Canning blood.
 
 i88o MISS YONGE'S RECOLLECTIONS 289 
 
 full activity by day, and at night first there were conversations 
 lasting into the small hours, and then the doves cooed and the 
 clock chimed! 
 
 All was however delightful to those in high health and high 
 spirits. One visit I remember, made memorable by an expedition 
 to Fairford to see the marvellous windows with which Mr. 
 Keble grew up, and his old home, with the rooks about which 
 he wrote a poem for his little nephew (in Miscellaneous Poems). 
 It was a drive, interesting and delightful in all ways. Another 
 time we went to Dorchester, the Oxfordshire Dorchester, with 
 the writhing Templar on his tomb, and the Jesse window in 
 solid stone, not merely glass. Also there was a picnic to 
 what was called Scutchamer Nob (supposed to be King Cwichelm's 
 knoll), a round Berkshire mound surmounting other hills, near 
 the supposed site of Alfred's battle of Ethandune. Near at 
 hand was the White Horse, a very Saxon specimen of drawing 
 indeed, all legs upon a slope; but whose scouring in Alfred's 
 tenth centenary is celebrated by 'Tom Hughes,' and com- 
 memorated by the Wantage Grammar School. There too we 
 saw Wayland Smith's cave, a disappointment, since it is only 
 a cromlech in a copse, not at all favourable for Tressilian's 
 adventures with Flibbertigibbet. 
 
 All these were times of most interesting conversations, I 
 wish I could remember them minutely. One, I know, was on 
 the Sabbatarian question, when Mr. Butler was more tolerant 
 of selling sweets on Sunday than I expected. I remember his 
 saying he had tried to persuade an old woman that it was 
 not wrong, because he found that it kept her from Holy 
 Communion, as she would not give it up, though her conscience 
 went against it. He said he had grown up to consider a sweet 
 or cake a legitimate Sunday treat, when at school at Westminster. 
 I did not and cannot agree. 
 
 We were quite agreed in disliking the system of sending 
 Sisters out on a "Que'te." It is more blessed to give than 
 to receive, but there is no blessing on begging. The Wantage 
 Sisters have never done it, yet they have thriven. This 
 is all that I clearly recollect. There were other meetings, 
 and especially one when he came to us for Mr. Keble's 
 funeral. He was full of two things the dangers of Ecce 
 Homo, and the beauty of Gerontius. He would read to us 
 
 T
 
 290 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE 1872- 
 
 the most undesirable bits of the former ; my mother said 
 on the principle of " come and smell this, it is so horrid." But 
 he advised me not to read it for the sake of others, or any 
 such books. 
 
 Gerontius he read us likewise, with exceeding admiration ; 
 but after we had stood at that grave, with the celandines 
 sparkling in the sunshine on the bank, while the twenty-third 
 Psalm was sung, "I felt," he said, "as if it were all swept 
 away." 
 
 A few more letters exchanged with Dr. Liddon 
 bring the correspondence of the Wantage life to 
 an end. 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON TO W. J. B. 
 
 CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, Monday, March 20, [1876]. 
 
 Ever since the news of Bishop Milman's 1 death reached us, 
 I have been thinking how very sorely it must press upon you. 
 When I first became curate of Wantage, in Jan. 1853, I re- 
 member your saying out in the garden, " There is one man of 
 genius in this neighbourhood, Milman of Lambourne ; we must 
 go over and see him." We did go, and drove back at night 
 by moonlight; and those first impressions, deepened and en- 
 riched as they were by subsequent contact with him, have been a 
 mental treasure of mine ever since. I owe them really, as so 
 much else, to you; and my own feeling at his removal from 
 this earthly scene must be a sort of faint reflection, I know, of 
 yours. And yet what an event it really is ! And how quietly 
 the world takes it except a friend here and there just as if 
 nothing very particular had happened at all ! 
 
 No person now left in the high places of the Church, as it 
 seems to me, combined so much, and combined it so well as 
 he did. To begin at the bottom, he was a philologist and a 
 philosopher two minds not often found in one, and both so 
 necessary for India ! Then he was a man of steady adherence 
 to principle, yet of immense consideration for others even 
 The Record, I see, has a respectful word for him on this score. 
 Then while he was a thorough Ecclesiastic, or Christian in Holy 
 Orders who believes his creed and work to be of the first im- 
 1 Bishop of Calcutta ; died March 15, 1876.
 
 i88o AN EARLY SERVICE 
 
 291 
 
 portance, he knew enough of mankind at large to do them 
 justice. 
 
 I cannot say how much I had looked forward to the privilege 
 of seeing him again. W. H. Milman says that they were to 
 have arrived in England on May 24. Poor Miss Milman ! what 
 she will do out there alone ! and with all the anxieties which 
 must attend and follow his death, I cannot think. ... I 
 follow the texts of your Lent addresses each day : they are here 
 in my study hanging up, and do me good, as well as the Wantage 
 people. 
 
 W. J. B. TO EEV. CANON LIDDON. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, January 2, 1877. 
 
 ... I thought on Sunday of your kind wish that I should 
 preach at St. Paul's that night, and grumbled in my mind at the 
 shortness of the tether which the work of a place like this allows. 
 But I was well rewarded and rebuked on Monday, when we had 
 333 communicants, of whom 230 came to church at 4.30 A.M. 
 I am very thankful to see that the daily Sacrifice of the Church 
 is once more offered in St. Paul's. It cannot, I think, fail to 
 bring a blessing on all the dwellers in London, perhaps even on 
 others to whom the Cathedral of London seems, though techni- 
 cally it is not, the metropolitan church. 
 
 We are all (D.Gr.) well and cheerful. The change from strength 
 and vigour to old age and decrepitude, which I suppose must 
 come in course of time, has not fallen yet on our household. . . . 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON TO W. J. B. 
 
 KILCOMAN, July 13, 1877. 
 
 I must write one line to say how grateful I (with many others, 
 no doubt) am to you for what you said in Convocation on the 
 subject of confession. Even at a time of excitement like this 
 your words cannot fail to do a great deal of good, and this not- 
 withstanding 's invidious comments upon them. , 
 
 however, is not likely to harm you much; he is a master of 
 popular platitudes, but not a man to move mountains whether 
 for good or evil. How odd it is that so many sensible people, 
 who know nothing whatever about confession from a personal 
 experience, yet can make the strongest statements about it on
 
 2Q2 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIP'E 1872- 
 
 purely a priori grounds. In any other subject-matter they would 
 be the first to feel the absurdity of such a proceeding ; but un- 
 theological passion, disguised under the form of zeal for the 
 purity and simplicity of religion, is capable of a good deal that is 
 absurd or worse. . . . 
 
 REV. CANON LIDDON TO W. J. B. 
 
 3 AMEN COURT, E.G., August 1, 1877. 
 
 ... I saw an account of the Wantage festivities 1 in the papers, 
 and read them, you may be sure, with great interest. If you 
 were an Italian, what an inscription you would put up to com- 
 memorate the Prince's visit! But, as you are an Englishman, 
 you will probably do nothing of the kind, though these mementos 
 have their use for those who come after us. ... 
 
 In 1880 his parochial life ended. He had gone 
 abroad in August for his annual holiday, and, as 
 his custom was, left his letters to accumulate during 
 his absence. In the heap that lay at Wantage was 
 one that would materially change his life. It was 
 an offer from Mr. Gladstone of a canonry in Wor- 
 cester Cathedral. Some three weeks passed, and 
 no answer being received by the Premier, the curates 
 were communicated with ; the letter was found and 
 opened, and its contents were telegraphed to the 
 Vicar in Tyrol. He returned at once to England, 
 and w^ent to Worcester to see the place and make 
 the necessary inquiries about the canonry, which 
 had been previously held by a personal friend of 
 his, Richard Seymour. 
 
 There were two points which needed settling 
 before he could make up his mind to accept the 
 
 1 When the Prince and Princess of Wales came to "Wantage to unveil 
 a statue of King Alfred, which was set up in the market-place by 
 Sir Robert Loyd Lindsay, now Lord Wantage.
 
 i88o OFFER OF A WORCESTER CANONRY 293 
 
 preferment. He could not endure the thought of 
 a severance of his connexion with the Wantage 
 sisterhood, and he was determined not to alter 
 what had been his practice during the whole of 
 his clerical life in using the eastward position in 
 celebrating the Holy Communion. Finding there 
 was no difficulty on these points, he accepted the 
 canonry. These letters show what his feeling had 
 been in making the decision to leave his old home. 
 
 W. J. B. TO . 
 
 Sept. 3, 1880. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone has offered me the vacant canonry of Wor- 
 cester. In a worldly point of view it is a 'good thing.' But 
 I cannot accept it without first ascertaining how far it would 
 accord with my present work. I received a telegraph message 
 at Innsbruck, and I wrote to Mr. G. to that effect. It is 
 very kind of him to offer me the first piece of real preferment 
 that has fallen into his hands, considering that he cannot rank 
 me among his supporters. 
 
 W. J. B. TO . 
 
 Sept. 8, 1880. 
 
 The matter is all settled. I found that I could hold the 
 canonry without giving up the work of the Sisters and of 
 the diocese, though eventually I must resign the parish and 
 with it of course the vicarage, which I love so much and 
 which so exactly meets my needs. At Worcester there is a 
 large house, much too large, and very ugly though comfort- 
 able, needing more servants and state, etc. But all doubtless 
 will shape itself. 
 
 W. J. B. TO EEV. W. G. SAWYER. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Sept. 14, 1880. 
 
 Thank you very heartily for all your loving words and deeds. 
 I know well that I have no truer friend than you. Nothing
 
 294 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE 1872- 
 
 ever more surprised me than the offer of this canonry. I neither 
 sought it nor cared for it. When I was elected Proctor for the 
 diocese, owing to your kind and vigorous exertions, I felt that I 
 had attained an honour of the most heart-satisfying kind. To 
 be elected by one's fellows fastidious and critical as the clergy 
 are seemed to me enough to gratify all one's ambition. And 
 with that I simply hoped to hold on as long as I had power to do 
 justice to such a charge. I did hope eventually to resign 
 Wantage, and to say, ' Pauperiem sine dote quaero. ' Now 
 however in this canonry I have what enables me to do this 
 'handsomely.' People will understand that it is impossible to 
 hold a parish which makes such a demand on one's powers, 
 together with an office which necessitates three months' absence 
 yearly. While at the same time I hope to live here at first at 
 ' The Mead,' then wherever I can and watch over the Sisters, 
 and take such part as I have hitherto taken in the general work 
 of the diocese. This is what the Bishop wishes, and what falls 
 in with my own instincts. Enough about myself. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO MRS. WlLKINS. 
 
 LEE HOUSE, BRIGHTON, Jan. 9, 1881. 
 
 Believe me, that nothing but a clear perception that 
 this change will in the long run be the best for all could have 
 induced me to make it. It is true that I might have gone 
 on for some time longer, but then I might have broken down 
 just when it would have been of all importance to be well and 
 strong. . . . Moreover, it is to be remembered that life 
 does not last for ever. We must all try to look forward a little 
 to that blessed time when there shall be no more separation, 
 but all shall be one and together in the Presence of our 
 blessed Lord. . . . 
 
 Naturally the first thing that occupied his 
 thoughts was the appointment of his successor. He 
 could not have left Wantage with any happiness 
 had he not been assured that the vicar who came 
 after him would carry on his work in the same spirit 
 and on the same lines. Fortunately the appoint-
 
 i88o A PRESENT FROM OLD CURATES 
 
 295 
 
 ment of his friend and former curate, T. H. Archer 
 Houblon, then Rector of Peasemore, completely set 
 his mind at rest on this subject. 
 
 He had always disliked testimonials, 1 but it was 
 impossible for him, after such a life and work, to 
 leave his parish without many tokens of the love and 
 esteem of his people. He was also greatly touched 
 and pleased by the gift of some carved oak book- 
 cases from his former curates, made for his new study 
 at Worcester ; and a letter from Mrs. Butler to the 
 Rev. W. G. Sawyer tells how the idea was conceived 
 and carried out. 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, Dec. 19, 1880. 
 
 Thank you for your letter, and for the confidence reposed 
 in me. Nothing could be better than bookcases for the dear 
 land old-Curates' offering. Especially as Henry Houblon ' takes ' 
 to those that line the study here. If the cases did not swallow- 
 up all the money (which / esteem a most generously large 
 amount), then some books might be added. Of course there 
 are difficulties in the way of selection, but I think that if you 
 will trust to me to negotiate the affair, with the help of Lady 
 Alwyne Compton whose taste, cleverness, and leisure are always 
 at her friends' disposal and of an ingenious man in old oak, 
 named Jeff, we might manage to have the right sort of book- 
 cases erected and planted, unbeknown to the Vicar. The one 
 thing I deprecate is the money being handed over bodily to him, 
 not so much that he would lose it ! but because it would be 
 unpoetical, and he would be hurt and pained instead of having 
 his heart so touched and made happy by the constant loyal 
 affection of his much loved fellow-labourers. It quite made my 
 heart bound, when I was recalling all the old names with the 
 Houblons, and being reminded that in that long list there was 
 
 1 He once made an epitaph on himself : 
 
 " Willing, but weak and witless, one lies here 
 Who died without a ' teapot ' or a tear !"
 
 296 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE 1872- 
 
 not one but was doing good and acceptable service to our dear 
 mother the Church of England. If you and the rest approve, 
 then I will set to work by letter, and circumvent the Vicar's 
 orders to his carpenter. We do not now expect to be at Wor- 
 cester until the 12th January, but we shall turn out from here 
 the previous week. It is very trying to break up one's home 
 of thirty-four years standing, and there is a deal to be done. 
 
 Some years later, in March, 1885, when, owing to a 
 fall at St. Giles's Vicarage, Eeading, which renewed 
 the old trouble in his back, he was obliged to lie 
 quiet for a time, he refers to this gift in lines which 
 portray the characters of his former fellow- workers. 
 The little poem was privately printed, and sent to 
 those old friends who formed its subject. A few 
 extracts are given. 
 
 The motto to the poem is : 
 
 Mi) dXXa^ys <j>i\ov dSiaffropov, p,r)8' d 
 
 /aa^. 
 Z'. 177. 
 
 It begins : 
 
 Dear Brothers and old Comrades, who the fight 
 
 Have fought with me of faith, in that great fray 
 
 'Twixt ill and good, death, life, the fiend and God, 
 
 Dear friends of many a year, I love to dwell 
 
 On days past by, when to the little child, 
 
 Or aged man just tottering to the grave, 
 
 Or widow in her woe, or youth, or maid, 
 
 Or suffering saint, or hardened sinner's heart, 
 
 Or those who hardly live by parish dole, 
 
 In school or church, or busy tradesman's house, 
 
 In poor man's cot, or field, or market place, 
 
 We strove, God helping us, to teach His Word. 
 
 And now I sit and muse, while each and all 
 
 Those well-remembered names, for ever stamped
 
 i88o VERSES ON HIS CURATES 297 
 
 On that their kindly and most welcome gift, 
 Holding what next I love, my store of books, 
 The gleanings of a life-time, bring to mind 
 Those well-remembered faces, voices, forms. 
 
 The verses proceed to describe in a few lines for 
 each, the characters of those who formed the long 
 line of Wantage curates. Among them was A. H. 
 Mackonochie, 1852 : 
 
 Next I see one with countenance serene, 
 
 And kindly smile, and firm resolving brow, 
 
 Whose single aim has been the Church's weal, 
 
 And ever to resist man's alien law. 
 
 Dear friend ! fain would I that thy lot were cast 
 
 In less perturbed waters, where thy love 
 
 And self-forgetful zeal and earnest word 
 
 Had found free course for that thy heart's desire, 
 
 The priest's best work, the winning souls for God. 
 
 Then follows H. P. Liddon, 1853 : 
 
 Here too is he, in word, in lore unmatched, 
 True courtier of the Queen of Sciences, 
 The learned theologian, firm and strong 
 To hold the faith once given to the saints, 
 Yet gentle as a child, whose sparkling wit 
 And playful humour, brightening argument, 
 Refutes gainsayers, yet leaves no wound behind. 
 
 Next: 
 
 two brothers, one whose joy has been 
 The weird agaric and the hidden lines 
 Of rock and fossil to investigate. 
 The other, vigorous, hearty, truest friend ; 
 Of hirsute aspect, yet of gentlest heart, 
 Much to be cherished, worthy there to dwell 
 Where souls need strong, and wise, and tender guide. 
 
 The late Father O'Neill, who came to Wantage 
 in 1864, 1 is thus described: 
 
 1 See Chapter VI., p. 175.
 
 298 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE 1872- 
 
 And here is one most faithful, blunt in tone, 
 No smooth-tongued man-observer, knowing naught 
 Save Christ and Him the crucified, and those 
 For whom Christ died, offering in distant land, 
 'Mid strange and dusky faces, all he had, 
 Till martyr-like at length his life he gave. 
 
 So he goes through the long list, lightly touching 
 the characteristics of each with a loving hand, till 
 the conclusion is reached : 
 
 And thus, as when some noble drama done, 
 
 The last act finished, voices hushed and still, 
 
 They who so well have wrought, together stand 
 
 Just for one lingering moment, side by side, 
 
 While they who gaze are filled with gratitude 
 
 For all they have seen and heard and solace sweet 
 
 Which they have tasted while the play went on ; 
 
 So I, recalling four-and-thirty years, 
 
 Those strangely mingled days of joy and woe, 
 
 Of disappointment, and of good success, 
 
 Of efforts some rewarded, some in vain 
 
 Of steady growth amidst anxieties, 
 
 Of seed oft sown in tears, then reaped in joy, 
 
 Ever have these before me, comrades true, 
 
 And lift up thankful heart and voice to Him 
 
 Who made us all of one mind in one house. 
 
 In the last entries he wrote in the " Parish 
 Journal," he said his farewell to his Wantage life. 
 
 Dec. 31, 1880. Thus then ends the last, or thirty-fourth, year 
 of the present vicar's incumbency of Wantage. In looking back 
 to the days gone by, there is indeed the deepest cause for thank- 
 fulness. God has indeed prospered and blessed this work, 
 giving " beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the 
 garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness" ; for a miserable 
 unedifying service the sweet singing of the choir ; for a church, 
 dirty, disfigured, unchristian, our present beautiful House of 
 God; for communicants, scarcely one in 150, 600; for schools 
 not worthy of the name, where some 24 boys and 12 girls
 
 i88o FAREWELL TO WANTAGE 299 
 
 were educated, the only general school of the parish build- 
 ings, and teachers watching over 600 children, besides the 
 Grammar school revived in better character than ever before, 
 and St. Mary's school where other classes than the poorest are 
 admirably taught and trained ; and then lastly, the Community 
 of Sisters, whose very presence brings blessings with it. Nor 
 must we pass by St. Michael's on the Downs, nor our little 
 chapel at Charlton, nor our mission room in Grove Street, all of 
 which are exercising the happiest and most blessed influence. 
 These are solid blessings such as cannot well be marred. The 
 machinery is fairly sufficient. It will need only constant use. 
 The tone of the parish very different from that which I remem- 
 ber in days gone by, is kindly, reasonable, trusting. Prejudices 
 have departed. Church teaching has been proved and accepted. 
 
 Thursday, the Epiphany, Jan. 6, 1881. On this day William 
 John Butler, Vicar of Wantage for upwards of thirty-four years, 
 left his much-loved flock and home to enter on the duties of 
 Canon of Worcester. May God forgive him his many short- 
 comings, failures, neglects, and in His mercy find a place for 
 him at the feet of faithful pastors of His sheep. 
 
 He took leave of his parishioners in this letter : 
 
 WANTAGE VICARAGE, December 3rd, 1880. 
 
 MY DEAR FRIENDS AND PARISHIONERS, After having lived 
 among you for the long space of thirty-four years in true 
 affection and intimacy, I feel that I cannot withdraw from a 
 connexion so deeply loved and cherished without a word of 
 explanation. I do not, need I say it, wish to leave Wantage 
 on the contrary, I am well aware that I cannot possibly look 
 to days happier and more full of blessings than those which 
 I have spent among you, still less again to form friendships like 
 those in which I now so greatly rejoice, some of those who have 
 grown up under my eye and care to manhood and womanhood, 
 whom I have had the privilege of preparing for the holy Kites 
 of the Church, others of those who for many a long year have 
 wrought with me and maintained the cause of Christ and His 
 Church, others again in whose homes I never fail to enter as a 
 kindly-welcomed guest. Nor can I forget that in our church- 
 yard lie some of those who are most dear and near to my heart. 
 In truth, I believe that almost nothing would have induced me
 
 300 CLOSE OF THE WANTAGE LIFE 1880 
 
 to resign this charge, save a conviction that my resignation at 
 this time is the best for all. For some years past I have felt 
 that the charge of a large and important parish like this of 
 Wantage is more than I can happily compass. Hitherto, I thank 
 God, I have been able, I think, fairly to meet the many demands 
 on my time and strength but it is impossible for me not to 
 be aware that, like all others, I must look to old age and 
 infirmity as years roll on. 
 
 When then it pleased Her Majesty the Queen to permit a 
 Canonry of a Cathedral Church to be offered to me, I could 
 not but look upon this as an opportunity not to be rejected 
 of seeing the parish of Wantage placed as I trusted in the 
 hands of a younger man, who, it might be reasonably hoped, 
 would carry on that work to which most freely and gladly I 
 have devoted all the best years of my life. 
 
 Such a one, I rejoice to think, has been designated as my 
 successor the result, I cannot doubt, of many earnest prayers 
 one whom all know well, and have already learnt to respect 
 in whose hands I can trust all, without one shadow of doubt 
 or anxiety. 
 
 For myself I can scarcely look forward. I know of a certainty 
 that in the ordinary course of nature I cannot be very long 
 either at Worcester or anywhere else. I trust however that 
 I may be enabled, even in the evening of life, to do some little 
 work for God's glory, before that "night cometh when no man 
 can work " : and for this I would earnestly ask your prayers. 
 I would ask you to pray both for me and for him who is 
 about to succeed me, that we may each do our duty honestly 
 and faithfully in our new spheres of service in the Lord's Vine- 
 yard. I need not add that, so long as I live, the welfare and 
 interests of this parish will always be most dear to my heart. 
 
 Earnestly praying that God's blessing may ever rest upon 
 you, I am, my dear friends and parishioners, your very loving 
 pastor, WILLIAM BUTLER.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 WORCESTER. 
 
 WHILE his house at Worcester was getting ready, 
 the new Canon and his family stayed at the Deanery, 
 and there laid the foundations of the closest friend- 
 ship of his later life : 
 
 You ask me to write, says Lady Alwyne Compton, what I 
 can remember of your father, but it is very difficult. It seems as 
 if one should have his vigour to describe him. He must have 
 been nearly sixty when I saw him first, and yet he was full of 
 boyish life and energy, with the keenest interest and enjoyment 
 in everything, and the warmest sympathy for all around him. 
 I never knew any one to whom religion was more the well- 
 spring of his life, that kept it always fresh. ' The breath of daily 
 prayer and praise sanctified his noble mind.' He was vehement, 
 yet very gentle ; stern, yet brimming over with sympathy. 
 
 I first saw him at Cambridge, when everybody was talking 
 of Lothair. ' The divine Theodora ' was blamed for entering 
 into a plot to blow up Louis Napoleon. ' People must be put out 
 of the way,' he said laughingly, "if they interfere with great 
 principles.' I used to tell him that the first thing I learned of 
 him was to do evil that good might come ! 
 
 In 1880 he was made Canon of Worcester, when we were in 
 the Deanery, and from that time our friendship with him and 
 your mother and you was always growing, if it could be said to 
 grow when it was so perfect from the beginning. 
 
 We had great difficulty in believing that he could live or take 
 any interest in a new place like Worcester ; but in a very few
 
 302 WORCESTER 1881- 
 
 weeks, I had almost said days, it was full of old friends to 
 him. 
 
 He knew the history of every verger and workman about the 
 Cathedral, and threw himself heartily into the interests of all 
 whom he met in the city. 
 
 No one ever went to him in vain for help or advice. He 
 often found time for a class once a month, to which he invited 
 some of our servants and others, to talk to them about the Holy 
 Communion. ' I don't believe in your religion,' he used to say, 
 ' unless you say your prayers and go to Holy Communion.' Our 
 servants were always ready to go, and have never forgotten 
 his teaching. He knew all the servants' names, and had a 
 kind word for them whenever he went in and out of the house. 
 When at breakfast about nine, we used to hear the door bang, 
 then a quick step coming up two stairs at a time, and he would 
 rush into the room : ' What ! still at breakfast ! I've had mine an 
 hour ago.' 
 
 He had a marvellous power of imparting his own strength 
 and enthusiasm, and I always remember, on the wonderful day of 
 his funeral, the character of calm strength in the faces of the 
 crowd of friends who filled the Cathedral and the cloisters. 
 There has been a great silence since he went away. 
 
 The pastoral spirit which was always alive in him 
 soon led him to form some communicant classes on 
 the old Wantage lines : 
 
 W. J. B. TO MRS. WILKINS. 
 
 THE COLLEGE, WORCESTER, March 8, 1881. 
 . . I had a class last week, composed of our servants and the 
 servants at the Deanery, seven in number altogether. I should 
 not be surprised if by degrees I get together something like the 
 old Wantage classes. At least, I mean to try to do so. You see 
 that there is a great difference between a Cathedral and a parish. 
 I have no one exactly who claims my services. A good many 
 people attend the Cathedral, but they belong to some parish or 
 other, and I know nothing about them personally. Still we have 
 a, great many people, vergers, bedesmen, singing men, boys of the 
 choir, a grammar school connected with the Cathedral, and I 
 hope by-and-bye to get hold of some of them. . . .
 
 1885 FOUNDATION OF A CHOIR SCHOOL 303 
 
 But he found plenty of work ready to his hand in 
 his new capacity of Canon Residentiary. 
 
 Already efforts had been begun to make the restored Cathedral 
 more spiritually useful in the city and diocese. Canon Barry, 
 with the co-operation of the Chapter, had established a Sunday 
 evening nave service, and had secured a better observance of the 
 Holy Week by arranging a special evening service at which 
 Bach's 'Passion Music' was sung. 
 
 Canon Butler, being the Canon in residence during the Lent 
 season of 1881, gave a series of addresses at three P.M. in the 
 Lady Chapel twice a week. These addresses were as much 
 appreciated in Worcester as afterwards in Lincoln Cathedral. 
 It was also by his advice that a Thursday Celebration of 
 the Holy Eucharist was then adopted. 
 
 From the earliest years of his ministry Canon Butler had 
 always been a great promoter of real education, i.e. of education 
 grounded on a basis of definite religious teaching. He was never 
 tired of denouncing in the strongest terms the sham of ' unde- 
 nominationalism.' It was therefore natural that he should at 
 once apply himself to the wants of Worcester in this respect. 
 Beginning with the Cathedral, he observed that the daily attend- 
 ance of the choristers (all of whom were then Worcester boys) at 
 matins and evensong, and at practice, had the effect of drawing 
 them away from the Cathedral Grammar school at important 
 hours of study, thereby seriously hindering their chance of 
 education. By this time the appointment of Canon Melville 
 and Canon Knox Little had brought fresh elements of vigour 
 to the Chapter. Accordingly a scheme was carefully thought 
 out, and approved by the Chapter, by which a separate choir 
 school was set up for the Cathedral choristers. The wardenship 
 of this school was entrusted to one of the minor canons (the 
 present Precentor), who for many years had worked with Canon 
 Butler at Wantage as assistant curate. The classical and mathe- 
 matical instruction of the boys was entrusted to a very able man, 
 whose education and training from boyhood had been personally 
 supervised by Canon Butler himself. 
 
 The choir school was commenced in January, 1882, and by the 
 kindness of the Dean was carried on for the first six months at 
 the Deanery, until a suitable house was available in College
 
 304 WORCESTER 1881- 
 
 Green for boarding the boys. The choir school has now de- 
 veloped into a preparatory school for the sons of gentlemen and 
 professional men; and the list of distinctions and honours won 
 by the boys in competitive examinations shows that to give 
 three hours a day to Cathedral duties in no way interferes with 
 the work of general education. 
 
 In the year 1882 the want of some better provision for the 
 education of upper class girls began to be acutely felt in Wor- 
 cester. While good endowed schools supplied amply the needs 
 of the boys, their sisters were dependent upon private effort, 
 which had proved wholly inadequate to meet the ever-increasing 
 demands of the educational movement of the time. Naturally 
 Canon Butler, who had the genius of a great educationalist, was 
 foremost in promoting a scheme for the establishment of a 
 school which should meet this need. 
 
 The leading citizens of the town, attracted by the manly 
 vigour and sound common sense of the new Canon, gave their 
 hearty co-operation to the scheme. A suitable house was pur- 
 chased for the purposes of the school by the late Lord 
 Beauchamp, who by all means in his power strongly supported 
 the project. And in June, 1883, the work was fairly started on 
 Church principles, and with a conscience clause, under a Head 
 Mistress of the Canon's selection. 
 
 Some of those who had known how persistently Canon Butler 
 had opposed the introduction of a conscience clause into National 
 schools were surprised at what appeared to them the incon- 
 sistency of his accepting it in a High school. But he saw clearly 
 that the circumstances are wholly different. The adoption of 
 a conscience clause makes it possible to give definite Church 
 teaching, because parents have full liberty to withdraw their 
 children from the whole, or from any part of it, so that the 
 teacher can be true to her own convictions while perfectly 
 loyal to the wishes of the parents, who certainly have the 
 right to determine what form of religion their children shall 
 be taught; whereas in schools where all children must come 
 to the divinity classes, a conscientious teacher is perpetually 
 hampered by fearing that she may be teaching what some of 
 them would disapprove, and finds herself upon the horns of a 
 dilemma, untrue either to herself or to them. 
 
 The Canon's clear-sightedness and generosity averted what he
 
 1885 HIGH SCHOOL FOR GIRLS 305 
 
 felt would have been the real calamity of an undenominational 
 school being started in Worcester ; he never used the word 
 'undenominational' without the modification 'so-called', for he 
 used to say that there could be no such thing as real undenomi- 
 nationalism ; that in practice it either means no religion, or 
 something so colourless as to have no reality; no backbone of 
 definite dogma which can enable it to stand against the rising 
 flood of agnosticism. 
 
 The success of the school has proved the wisdom of his pre- 
 science; but it was not only in laying down the true lines at 
 first, but also by his constant fostering care, that he contributed 
 so largely to that success. 
 
 His generous trust in all those who worked with him inspired 
 them with something of his own enthusiasm ; it was such a 
 joy to give him pleasure; one could not but long and strive 
 to be what he believed one to be; the sound of his cheery 
 voice, the grip of his friendly hand, seemed to impart some 
 of his own manly vigour, and he thoroughly understood the 
 details of school life. While he detested mere theorising, he 
 had strong and clear views of the true aims and of the right 
 methods of teaching; to hear him give a lesson was worth 
 months of ordinary training ; no eye could wander, no attention 
 flag, while he held the young minds 'at tension'; and with 
 absolute accuracy and perfect clearness drove home the point 
 he meant them to apprehend. 
 
 Verily had his path lain in that direction he would have 
 been the greatest head master of this century. But there was 
 another side to this strong, and as it appeared to those who 
 knew him only superficially, somewhat stern character; a depth 
 of untold tenderness ; a sympathy, womanlike in its gentleness, 
 which was called forth at once by suffering or sorrow; it is 
 difficult to touch upon this without lifting the veil that should 
 cover the sanctities of the hidden life; but those who have 
 felt it, perhaps first learned from him that the word ' comfort ' 
 means 'strength,' and think of him as, above all, a very St. 
 Barnabas, a son of consolation. 
 
 Closely connected with this was his chivalrous attitude 
 towards all women. His ideal of Christian womanhood was a 
 very high one, and if he strongly deprecated any approach to 
 publicity in woman's work, it certainly was not that he de-
 
 306 WORCESTER 1881- 
 
 preciated their powers, but that he feared for them the loss 
 of the delicate refinement, the purity, the humility, which he 
 held to be their distinguishing and characteristic virtues, "the 
 ornament of a meek and quiet spirit." 
 
 So write two of those who worked with him at 
 Worcester. He himself wrote to Canon Liddon : 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. CANON LIDDON. 
 
 THE COLLEGE, WORCESTER, Dec. 18, 1883. 
 
 ... I have taken an active part here in setting afloat 
 a ' High school ' another hateful word for girls. I had 
 three alternatives (1) and worst, to hold my hand and then 
 
 suffer to swoop down upon us, and set up a school which 
 
 would certainly do much to stamp out what there is of 
 Churchmanship and even Christianity from the city. 
 
 (2) To set up a school with what people are pleased to call 
 'undenominational teaching,' which again means something 
 against the Church. For there are only two religions in 
 England with any definite doctrinal faith, ourselves and the 
 Roman Catholics. The others are all covered and included and 
 maintained by the word 'undenominational.' 
 
 (3) To have such as our present school, where the teaching 
 is most definite, with a power for parents to withdraw children 
 from the religious instruction. I believe that this will never 
 be exercised. But it satisfies the great mass of those who 
 certainly otherwise would have set going (1) or (2). ... In 
 the colonies the (R.C.) Sisters and others receive masses of 
 children into their schools, with an understanding that they 
 are not to influence them towards the R.C. religion. Of 
 course this very often results as one might expect, though 
 the promise may be honestly kept. I think that there is a 
 great difference between day schools and boarding schools in 
 this matter. A boarding school is a family where one and 
 one only faith can rightfully exist. . . . But it is very different 
 when you are making arrangements for day-school teaching in 
 a town. We have to deal with masses of Church people, who 
 are themselves not half instructed, and if you refuse to satisfy 
 their scruples, you simply precipitate them into the opposite
 
 1885 TRUE POSITION OF WOMEN 307 
 
 camp. Whereas by a little patience you bring them to be 
 strong supporters of the truth. I found this to be the case 
 in Wantage, and I believe that it will be the same here. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO KEY. CANON LIDDON. 
 
 THE COLLEGE, WORCESTER, March 3, 1884. 
 
 I am driven to write to you on account of the few words 
 of yours which I read in the Guardian, lately spoken at Oxford 
 on the subject of women. I am most thankful that you said 
 them. It is to my mind by far, and beyond all comparison, 
 the saddest feature of this generation, that women are claiming, 
 and are encouraged to claim, a position which is not intended 
 for them; and that they do not perceive the inevitable con- 
 sequence, that while they never can emulate men in men's 
 work, and can at best be but poor imitators, they will lose 
 that most grand power and influence which are really and 
 by God's providence their own. 
 
 I am sometimes thankful to think that the end of my earthly 
 life cannot be far off. It seems to me that what with the 
 sentimentality of one set of minds, the recklessness of others, 
 the self-will, the weak abandonment of those great Church 
 principles which men like Mr. Keble held and taught . . . 
 there is a very bad time ahead. 
 
 I trust that will comport himself reasonably. ... If 
 
 men of his type would be Churchmen first, and then politicians, 
 the case would of course be different. I always tell them to 
 vote and work for those who "love our nation and build us 
 synagogues." That text seems to embody the politics of a 
 true Churchman. . . . 
 
 Other letters, illustrating the Worcester period, 
 follow. 
 
 W. J. B. TO MRS. WILKINS. 
 
 THE COLLEGE, WORCESTER, Feb. 10, 1882. 
 
 . . . Depend on it, there is nothing like Church teaching 
 to make children grow up in the right road. What crowds of 
 young men and young women are now, I thank God, doing well. 
 There is something in Church teaching definite and satisfying,
 
 3o8 WORCESTER 1881- 
 
 which cannot be found elsewhere. Prayer, Church, Holy Com- 
 munion, these are the means by which God's grace enters the 
 soul, and when people seek and use them, they will not go far 
 away. 
 
 No one could have grieved more than I, when I was, as I 
 thought, called upon to relinquish a place and post which I 
 loved so dearly. But I had to look to the future, and it was 
 quite clear to me that it would be better for the future welfare 
 of the parish, that a younger man should be appointed. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. CANON ISAAC TAYLOR. 
 
 THE PALACE, ST. STEPHEN'S GBEEN, 
 DUBLIN, May 5, 1883. 
 
 MY DEAR TAYLOR, I was delighted to get your letter in this 
 wild land, and to hear that your 'magnum opus' is really about 
 to see the light. You must feel the joy of delivery ' that a man 
 is born into the world.' It is most kind of you to offer a copy 
 to such an ignoramus as I am. I shall value it the more on the 
 'omne ignotum' principle. Nevertheless I do look forward 
 much to the diving into its abysses. I can hardly fail to pull 
 out and appropriate a jewel or two. 
 
 I was giving a lecture at Sheffield on Monday, on St. Chry- 
 sostom, and I had great pleasure in making acquaintance with 
 our friend Bradley. 1 . . . 
 
 We, my daughter Mary and I, arrived here last Wednesday. 
 The Trenches are old friends, and the visit has been hanging 
 over for a long time. I had never before been in Ireland, and 
 so far I am agreeably disappointed. Dublin is, to my mind, 
 far more of a metropolis than Edinburgh, and there seem to be 
 much life and business in the place. I went to the trial of 
 Hanlon, one of the conspirators, and was much struck with the 
 freedom and calmness with which the witnesses owned to lying. 
 
 Counsel cross-examining : ' Then, when you said that, you 
 lied.' Witness (cheerfully), 'I did, sor.' This repeated several 
 times during the course of examination. 
 
 Your letter was most apropos. The Archbishop's son is a 
 partner with Paul, and the bit of Irish lore created much interest. 
 
 I stay here over Whitsunday to preach in Cathedral. 
 1 Henry Bradley, Esq., now joint-editor of The New English Dictionary.
 
 1885 A BIRTHDAY LETTER 
 
 309 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS SISTER. 
 
 LOWEB HOUSE OF CONVOCATION, Feb. 13, 1884. 
 Brothers and sisters do not often write to one another, I 
 fancy, in a general way. They take it for granted that all is 
 right, and so leave matters alone till there is a real reason for 
 doing so. Birthdays are something of this kind, and are specially 
 useful in bringing out old memories and present love. And 
 thus, in the midst of a great deal of talk, and some excitement, 
 of a very long debate on the old vexed question of the ' Con- 
 science Clause,' I am struggling to scribble at the corner of the 
 table, sitting all askew, to write a word of birthday greeting. 
 We are all growing very old, but somehow we keep pretty 
 well together the essence of youth, i.e. vigour and cheeriness. 
 (Division is coming, I know not which way it will go. The fight 
 is hard. I rather expect to be on the wrong side, because I 
 have for once taken what is looked upon as the less Churchy 
 
 line. is very fierce and strong, and the house is rather 
 
 with him in this matter.) We have, I think, much, very much, 
 to be thankful for. Sound health is indeed a blessing second to 
 none, and in spite of occasional creakiness, we seem to have 
 inherited good sound constitutions. I am now two years older 
 than my father was when he left us in 1849, and you are as old 
 as our grandmother when I first remember her. They seemed 
 quite old to us, but I doubt if we should seem so old to the 
 young ones. Then it is a great comfort to see the young ones 
 growing up good and healthy and right-minded, every one of 
 them, settling down into moderate middle life, with conscience 
 " void of offence towards God and towards men." And so, I 
 think, we shall jog on to the end, and when the call comes, 
 be ready to meet it 'without shame,' as Bishop Andrewes calls 
 it, ' and if it pleases Him, without pain.' And so our generation 
 will have done its work and be called to its rest. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS MOTHER. 
 
 THE COLLEGE, WORCESTER, March 23, 1884. 
 
 MY DEAREST MOTHER, Hurrah for March ! How well he has 
 treated us this year. This fine soft weather, with wind W. and 
 S.W., will make up for many other years like, for instance, 1883,
 
 3io WORCESTER 1881- 
 
 and the long protracted bitterness and misery. Now everything 
 is looking bright and genial. Rooks cawing happily as they build 
 their nests just opposite to my study window ; spring vegetation 
 clean and healthy, fruit trees covered with bloom, March dust 
 without its poison. Altogether everything delights the eye and 
 ears. People say that we shall pay for this by-and-bye. I do 
 not hold by those croakings. You never can calculate in this 
 country either on fine or foul weather, and the only plan is 
 to be happy when one can, and to let the future take care of 
 itself. 
 
 Last week was tolerably busy in one or other way. On 
 Wednesday I preached at a village . . . where the leading 
 
 man Mr. , is one of our great iron-masters. He is an 
 
 excellent Churchman, and a very well informed and interesting 
 person. . . . This good Mr. - - has built a church and 
 schools for his men at his own expense, and takes immense 
 interest in all that concerns their good. He quite laughs at the 
 idea of strikes. Living among his men, they realise him as a 
 friend, and work cheerily under his directions. It is a wonder- 
 ful blessing to a neighbourhood when a man like that is found 
 there. On Thursday I was at Upton-on-Severn, a small country 
 town about twelve miles from this. It was of some importance 
 at the time of the Battle of Worcester. The Cromwellian party 
 had to cross the Severn, the cavaliers having broken down 
 the bridge. They managed somehow, by crawling on their 
 stomachs along the parapet, occupied the church tower, and 
 drove the cavaliers back on the road to Worcester. . . . 
 Your most loving son, 
 
 W. J. B. 
 
 His mother died, aged 91, on April 4th, 1884. 
 This was the last letter of a series written every 
 Sunday for a period of more than thirty years. 
 
 W. J. B. TO MRS. WILKINS. 
 
 4 ADAM STREET, ADELPHI, W.C. Feb. 11, 1885. 
 
 I cannot think how you and others can be so good and 
 faithful. I do greatly delight in getting your kind notice of my 
 birthday. I do not suppose that I shall have many more
 
 1885 WORK AT WORCESTER 311 
 
 for my kind friends' greeting. Wantage always must be to me 
 the spot in the world in which I feel most interested, and it 
 is the greatest blessing out of my many blessings that have 
 befallen me in life, that all goes on quite steadily and satis- 
 factorily. I may say like St. Paul, though with all reverence 
 and humility I planted, another watered, but God giveth the 
 increase. Yes, I fully hope to preach to you at Eastertide. 
 Though I am growing older, yet my voice has not deserted me. 
 It has plenty of practice, I assure you. I have to preach in no 
 less than five Cathedrals during the coming Lent. . . . 
 
 An anonymous writer in the Church Times thus 
 summed up the impression left by William Butler 
 on the Cathedral and city of Worcester : 
 
 When Canon Butler of Wantage, most energetic among men, 
 was appointed to Worcester, the preaching power of the Cathedral 
 was materially strengthened. Many an eloquent, manly, and 
 downright sermon have we heard from his lips. He threw him- 
 self heart and soul into the improvement of the services, especially 
 with regard to the more reverent and devotional Celebrations 
 each Sunday and Saints' day in the year. He preached right and 
 left in the diocese with all the vigour and strength of a man 
 carrying but half his years, not knowing, apparently, what ill- 
 health or weakness meant. In the matter also of the voluntary 
 choir for the Sunday evening services in the nave Canon Butler 
 recognised a valuable means of obtaining a firmer hold over men, 
 co-operating cordially in the movement. Now that he is Dean of 
 Lincoln there are many who look back with gratitude to his 
 work in Worcester. It was suggested in the early days of the 
 Salvation Army movement to Canon Butler the advisability 
 of attempting to grapple with the new force, with the object of 
 diverting the singular organisation into orthodox channels. 
 With characteristic energy he at once condemned the idea. It is 
 impossible, he said, for the fundamental principles are opposed to 
 Church doctrine ; their fierce and dangerous enthusiasm could 
 never be made to harmonise with our system, and any attempt 
 to accomplish this must fail. 
 
 In May, 1885, the Deanery of Lincoln was offered
 
 312 WORCESTER 1881- 
 
 to him by Mr. Gladstone. Curiously enough, on this 
 occasion also he was abroad, taking his holiday in 
 North Italy, and the letter lay about ten days or a 
 fortnight at Worcester. The contents of the letter 
 were telegraphed to him, and he returned at once to 
 England. He paid a short visit to the Bishop of 
 Lincoln, an old friend of many years' standing in 
 the Oxford diocese, and satisfied himself that his 
 acceptance of the post would not render it necessary 
 for him to sever his connexion with the Wantage 
 Sisterhood. Here are two of his letters in answer 
 to the kind expressions of friends on his new 
 preferment : 
 
 W. J. B. TO 
 
 ST. MARY'S HOME, St. Barnabas Day, 1885. 
 
 Thank you and your father also for your kind words. Do not 
 however congratulate me, but pray for me. Church appoint- 
 ments involve very serious responsibility, and certainly Lincoln 
 Cathedral not least of all. I would not have accepted it if it 
 would have separated me from Wantage. This was the main 
 difficulty. But when I came to talk over the matter with the 
 Bishop and the Canons, I found that practically I could be here 
 as much as ever, or even more so. A Dean's residence is quite 
 undefined, though a Canon's is not. ... I have been so lovingly 
 greeted by the Lincoln people that I feel already at home 
 there. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. W. G. SAWYER. 
 
 THE MEAD, WANTAGE, June 12, 1885. 
 
 Thank you for your kind words and all your affection and 
 kindly thought of me. It has been a matter of very serious con- 
 sideration whether I should accept this charge of the Lincoln 
 Deanery. I have lived so long in the ' West countree ' that 
 eastern voices and ways are strange to me though at one time 
 Middlesex, Hertfordshire, and Essex were my natural habitat.
 
 1885 LEAVING WORCESTER 313 
 
 But the great question was that of severance from the Wantage 
 Sisters, and it was not until I had ascertained that I could hold 
 on there that I allowed my name to be gazetted. After long 
 talk with the Bishop and the Chapter, both of whom received me 
 most warmly, ... I found that there is little, if any more, diffi- 
 culty than I have at present, in keeping my charge here. Of 
 course I shall resign everything else, as Rural Deanery, Chap- 
 laincy of the Berks Forces, etc., and so far lighten the ship. . . . 
 
 He was not allowed to leave Worcester without 
 some recognition of his work from the inhabitants 
 of the city. A circular letter was put forth by the 
 Dean and the Mayor, of which this is a portion : 
 
 WORCESTER, August, 1885. 
 
 It has been thought that the friends of the Rev. Canon 
 Butler, who has recently been preferred to the Deanery of 
 Lincoln, would gladly avail themselves of the opportunity to 
 join in some permanent memorial of his work and zeal for 
 good in this city and diocese during his five years' connexion 
 with the Cathedral Chapter. The earnestness with which Dean 
 Butler has laboured amongst us to maintain the highest pur- 
 poses of our Cathedral service, to foster relations of increasing 
 sympathy between the Cathedral and municipal bodies, to 
 promote the institution and insure the success of the High 
 school for girls ; added to the deep personal esteem which 
 he has inspired in numbers by the self-sacrifice and sympathetic 
 devotion of his life and character, have suggested not alone 
 the necessity for some memorial, but that it should take a 
 form which, while being personally acceptable, might per- 
 manently connect the memory of his work with a Worcester 
 institution, which he did so much to found and perfect, and 
 in the success of which he is known to be deeply interested. 
 
 It is therefore proposed to form a Reference Library at 
 the High school for the use of the teaching staff and the 
 pupils, the books being placed and preserved in a suitable 
 case, a tablet on which may prominently connect the library 
 with Dean Butler's name. 
 
 It is also hoped that it may be found possible to present
 
 314 WORCESTER 1881- 
 
 for the Dean's personal acceptance an illuminated address 
 containing the subscribers' names. 
 
 On December 16th the address was presented to 
 him by his old friend Lord Beauchamp. He 
 replied : 
 
 Lord Beauchamp, ladies, and gentlemen, While most gratefully 
 accepting this token of your extreme kindness, I am compelled 
 to say that, in some sense, you have placed me in a false position. 
 I feel as if in some sense I stand before you this afternoon as 
 an impostor. I cannot for a moment venture to take to myself 
 the kind expressions which are conveyed to me in this testi- 
 monial. I can only assure you that I have had most earnestly 
 at heart the welfare of this school and city, and whatever 
 little work I have been able to do has been more than repaid 
 by the kind regard you have accorded me. But I cannot for 
 a moment imagine that such a school as this depends in any 
 sense on me. I am sure if I had never been Canon of 
 Worcester, or even if I had never existed at all, a school of 
 this kind must have been formed in the city. It is impossible 
 to suppose that in a city so conspicuous for its intelligence, its 
 cultivation, and its patriotism, the very brightest jewels the 
 precious pearls I may call them the sweet young maidens 
 who are growing up among us would have been left without 
 the very best kind of education which this country could 
 possibly afford. Therefore I simply feel myself as one who 
 has just pulled the trigger of a mine already laid; or, if I 
 may take something of a Worcester comparison, as one who 
 just touches the ripe fruit, and it falls without effort to the 
 ground. I may say that the kindness and confidence with 
 which I have been treated in the effort I did make to suggest 
 this school to the city, more than repaid me for any anxiety 
 I may have felt. I should like to be allowed to repeat what 
 I have said on a previous occasion, that I believe there is no 
 place in England where any public effort is so admirably met 
 as it is in this city of Worcester. There is less of that wretched 
 petty jealousy which so often cramps people's attempts ; there 
 is so little of that political or religious antagonism which we 
 find in so many places, that any one who has any work of
 
 1885 VOLUNTARY EFFORTS 315 
 
 good to do in this city may certainly expect to be heartily 
 and kindly met. Let me say one word as to that which 
 especially delights me as I look upon this school. It has 
 been our own voluntary effort. By our own personal exertions 
 we have done this work ourselves; and as I look on this 
 beautiful room, as I think of the excellent scholastic machinery 
 we have around us, as I think of that splendid staff of mistresses 
 who are teaching your children, and as I think of the results 
 which we are seeing year after year springing forth from this 
 school, it does seem to me that we have here that which I 
 very much desire to see everywhere, a firm and consistent 
 setting forth of what voluntary effort can do. I believe in 
 voluntary effort. I believe it to be consistent with the whole 
 character of the people of this country. We hear in other 
 countries of wonderful State institutions, of schools and other 
 institutions of the same kind manipulated from headquarters; 
 but in England we do everything ourselves. Our hospitals 
 are our own work; our Church it is true that some people 
 may call it State-supported, but those who know better know 
 it is nothing of the land. Our army is a great voluntary 
 institution, and we know that when there was some danger 
 to this country from the vapouring French colonels, 250,000 
 Volunteers started up to oppose the foe. So it is with our 
 schools. It is somewhat the fashion in some quarters to 
 desire to introduce that manipulating system ; but I only hope 
 that I shall never see it done. It is true that sometimes 
 voluntary effort begins somewhat clumsily ; but in voluntary 
 effort there is heart and will, and after all that is the great 
 thing which gives it spirit and life and genuineness. There- 
 fore I trust we shall never see voluntary effort suppressed in 
 this country by the action of Boards in London, Commissions, 
 or anything of that sort. We have seen something of that, 
 and the evil of it; attempts for instance to deal with the 
 arrangements of land; attempts to interfere between masters 
 and men; and others are threatened, though I trust we shall 
 never see anything of that sort. This school is a clear token 
 to everybody how voluntary effort can send forth its work 
 better, more reasonably, and more lovingly done, than any 
 Board or Commission. I thank you with all my heart for the 
 kindness with which you have received me, not only to-day,
 
 316 WORCESTER 1881- 
 
 but for all the many, many kindnesses, all the love and affection 
 and confidence which I have received during the time I was 
 resident among you. It is a great grief, I do assure you, to 
 leave you, and I can only say this, that Worcester, this fair 
 city and its lovely Cathedral, and certainly this most charming 
 school of yours, will ever find a place in the very warmest 
 affections of my heart. 
 
 Although he held the canonry for so short a time, 
 his strenuous character and his large sympathies did 
 not fail to make a deep impression on Worcester. 
 This was expressed in a letter from a citizen of 
 Worcester, written on the occasion of the Canon's 
 appointment to the Deanery of Lincoln : 
 
 I am very glad for Lincoln ! but the faithful city cannot 
 take a quite unselfish view of your removal. Although I felt 
 well convinced that you would leave us if the call of duty came 
 with sufficient clearness and emphasis, the definite acceptance of 
 the idea of separation is not perhaps the less painful on that 
 account. You had come to work so good an influence amongst 
 us our Church, our municipal life our external life altogether 
 were feeling more and more the benefit of your zealous work 
 for truth and high principle, that to those of us who know how 
 much this goodly city needs the comfort of such influences, your 
 removal is more than ordinary painful. 
 
 As to the High school, I do not quite know where we are to 
 look for the steadfast faith and enthusiasm with which you began 
 and have carried on that great work to its perfect end. That, how- 
 ever, will remain as a link still to connect Lincoln with Worcester. 
 Of course to very many of us your removal will mean a sharper 
 wrench still, because a personal one. Those who have been 
 permitted, as I have, to a share of your deep, loving, and affec- 
 tionate sympathy, and know how great that sympathy was even 
 for one's everyday difficulties, will continue to hope that you have 
 been long enough with us to leave, when you go, some portion of 
 your large heart behind. 
 
 And to the no less deep and lasting impression
 
 i88s INSTALLED DEAN OF LINCOLN 317 
 
 made upon the clergy of the diocese, touching testi- 
 mony was borne after his death nearly nine years 
 later, when an eye-witness related how " at the 
 Diocesan Societies' meeting one after another got up 
 to express a sense of deep personal loss, and of the 
 blessing he had been to Worcester." 
 
 He was installed Dean at Lincoln, 15th July, 
 1885, and on the 26th November following was 
 made D.D. at Cambridge, jure dignitatis, as he 
 considered that for the dignity of the cathedral the 
 Dean should hold that degree, and therefore took it 
 as a matter of principle.
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 LINCOLN. 
 
 [THE REV. A. R. MADDISON, Priest- Vicar in Lincoln 
 Cathedral, who from the earliest days of William 
 Butler's residence in Lincoln was thrown much into 
 contact with him, has contributed the greater part 
 of the chapters dealing with the last nine years of 
 the Dean's life.] 
 
 Dean Butler came from a Cathedral of the new 
 foundation to a Cathedral of the old. After a life 
 spent in a country parish he had in 1881 found 
 himself in a Cathedral city where he had much to 
 learn. As Canon of Worcester he threw himself 
 heartily into every work, and made it his business 
 to draw city and Cathedral together. At Lincoln 
 he found another Cathedral with a different history 
 and character. He found himself invested with 
 authority as Dean, but with no one able to say 
 precisely to what limits the authority extended. His 
 very residence as Dean was undefined. Eight 
 months in the year he was bound to be resident, 
 but the terms of the residence were not stated. 
 
 There are topographical difficulties too at Lincoln 
 which have been generally cited as obstacles to any
 
 i885 CITY AND CATHEDRAL 319 
 
 cordial unanimity between the Cathedral and the 
 city. * Above ' and ' Below hill ' are terms sig- 
 nificant of a line of demarcation and two populations. 
 The Cathedral has no parochial jurisdiction. The 
 city itself, although the capital of the county, is very 
 unfavourably situated as a centre. The service of 
 trains is not convenient. Proud as Lincolnshire 
 people might be of their Minster, they certainly 
 did not regard Lincoln as a Yorkshireman does York. 
 Grantham, Boston, Stamford, and Louth had their 
 separate interests and agencies. The Cathedral 
 clergy were looked upon by the parochial clergy as 
 separate from themselves. The Cathedral services 
 might be admired for their musical effect, but any 
 attempt to represent the Cathedral as a spiritual 
 force and activity would have been received some 
 few years ago with a smile. 
 
 Dean Butler came with the heart and the lifelong 
 experience of a parish priest. His great aim and 
 object was to utilise the machinery he found ready 
 to his hand. He found a vast Cathedral with only 
 one Celebration of Holy Communion on a Sunday, 
 closed and unused from five P.M. on Sunday to the 
 following morning, and one of the very first things 
 he did was to provide an early as well as a late 
 Celebration every Sunday. He never rested till he 
 established a Sunday evening service. His parochial 
 instinct showed itself in the care he bestowed on the 
 workmen employed in the Cathedral. He sought 
 them out and brought them to Confirmation and 
 the Holy Communion. He was in thorough sym-
 
 320 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 pathy with the parochial clergy. He made it known 
 that he would be always willing, if he possibly 
 could, to help those who were hard pressed on 
 Sundays. He did all he could to bring together 
 the Cathedral and the city. He cultivated friendly 
 relations with the leading citizens, and threw him- 
 self heartily into the welfare of institutions such as 
 the School of Art, which he held to be a valuable 
 influence on the manners and characters of the people. 
 He was never deterred by religious or political 
 differences from co-operating in any good work with 
 those who were not like-minded with himself, and he 
 earned the title which was given him, in a letter 
 written after his death, of a ' kindly citizen.' 
 
 Education, it is needless to say, still occupied his 
 thoughts, as it had all his life, and he took the 
 deepest interest in the Grammar school, and also 
 in the school where the Cathedral choir boys were 
 taught and boarded. 
 
 So much may be taken as a sort of summary of 
 Dean Butler's life at Lincoln, but no one could gather 
 from it a true conception of the work he was engaged 
 in. What one of his colleagues said of him shortly 
 after his death is literally true : " The Dean has lived 
 another life and done another work." While he 
 worked hard as Dean of Lincoln, he was working 
 equally hard as head of a great religious organisation, 
 the Wantage Sisterhood. And the work involved 
 in this it is difficult to estimate. Hardly a day 
 passed without bringing him letters connected with 
 it. His frequent journeys to Wantage and to other
 
 1893 POSITION OF THE DEAN 321 
 
 places where branches of the Sisterhood were estab- 
 lished, of which we used sometimes to complain, 
 as they took him so much away from Lincoln, were 
 enough to have taxed the strength of a younger 
 man. How he did it, how he contrived to preserve 
 his wonderful vigour and freshness through it all, 
 will ever be a marvel. 
 
 In trying to give a sketch of his Lincoln life, I am 
 obliged to put it mainly into the form of personal 
 reminiscences. Circumstances threw me much in his 
 company, and the materials are lacking for a syste- 
 matic detailed account, for there are not so many 
 letters available for biographical purposes as in the 
 earlier part of his life. 
 
 He found a good deal to do on coming to Lincoln, 
 for he had his own opinion as to what a Cathedral 
 should be, and Lincoln fell very short of it. 
 
 But his powers were limited. He indeed in- 
 herited great traditional prestige as Dean of Lincoln ; 
 but he found that practically he had only the 
 power to obstruct. He could not initiate any legis- 
 lation for the Cathedral without the unanimous con- 
 sent of his colleagues, although he could effectually 
 stop any himself. Such was the change from the 
 mediaeval Dean whose title was Dominus Decanus, 
 and who enjoyed the privilege of a train-bearer 
 within the close, to the modern Dean whose rights 
 (as he was informed before leaving Worcester) were 
 merely ' those which the Common Law gave him.' 
 
 A letter from one of his oldest and most intimate 
 friends, who happened to spend a Sunday at Lincoln
 
 322 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 shortly before Dean Butler took up his residence 
 there, somewhat prepared him for what he would 
 find. It is full of good humoured criticism, and 
 after detailing various points where improvements 
 seemed needful, it sums up with the remark that 
 " the worshipping arrangements of the congregation 
 seriously cry out for the application of a little good 
 feeling and common sense." 
 
 Dean Butler could not but be struck with the 
 poverty and meagre decorations of the altar, coming 
 as he did from Worcester, where costly gifts had 
 been offered for the sanctuary. Certainly Lincoln 
 Cathedral could not match with any ordinary well- 
 cared-for parish church. There was but one altar 
 cloth, a red one, which did duty all the year round. 
 The altar table itself was a poor thing, furnished 
 merely with two brass candlesticks containing candles 
 which were never lighted. A sanctuary carpet 
 worked by ladies of the county in 1847, could not 
 be termed a thing of beauty, although age had toned 
 down the brilliancy of its colours. 
 
 The altar rails had been moved eastward from 
 their original position in order to give more sitting 
 accommodation, but with the result that the space 
 within the sanctuary was cramped and confined. It 
 cannot be wondered at that he felt the change, or 
 that his first Christmas Day was not a very happy 
 one. He saw much he wished to alter, and the 
 question was how it could be done. 
 
 I may here without impropriety say that the Dean 
 always bore cordial witness to the kindness of his
 
 1893 INNOVATIONS 323 
 
 colleagues, without whose consent no change could 
 have been effected. The changes were considerable, 
 not only in minor details such as have been enumer- 
 ated, but also in the multiplication of services. 
 
 The Sunday evening service at 6.30 was one of 
 the principal changes. This he set his heart on from 
 the very first. He had found it at Worcester and 
 was resolved to have it at Lincoln. He made him- 
 self absolutely responsible for the expenses connected 
 with it, and although fortunately the offertories 
 covered the greater part of the cost, leaving him 
 only a small amount to defray, it is well that this 
 should be known for he did not speak about it. 
 Neither should it be forgotten that, so far from using 
 the Cathedral pulpit on Sunday evenings for the 
 display of his own preaching powers, he only re- 
 served one Sunday in each month for himself, 
 leaving the lion's share to the canon in resi- 
 dence. 
 
 As hard things were said about him which he 
 did not deserve, I think it only just to let this also 
 be known. Undoubtedly the Sunday evening service 
 was an innovation, and it was only natural that it 
 should affect at first the congregations of parish 
 churches which had hitherto had Sunday evening 
 entirely to themselves ; but he could not accept this 
 as a valid reason why the Cathedral should be shut 
 up for so many hours when multitudes could be 
 attracted by a bright musical service in the nave. 
 He argued that the ordinary steady church-going 
 people would not desert their parish churches, while
 
 324 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 the shifting element of congregations might just as 
 well be drawn to the Cathedral. 
 
 Of course this multiplication of services entailed 
 increased work on the executive staff. The Celebra- 
 tions of Holy Communion were much more frequent. 
 He was himself entirely responsible for the one at 
 seven A.M. on the great festivals and the first Sunday 
 of each month, and it was my privilege to be able 
 to assist him, as it did not in any way interfere 
 with my own parochial duty. I have often thought 
 that those who saw him then saw him at his best. 
 The congregation was one after his own heart, mainly 
 composed of workmen employed in the Cathedral, 
 and domestic servants within the close ; and none 
 who was present can forget the wonderful earnest- 
 ness with which he used to give a short address 
 immediately after the Nicene Creed on these occa- 
 sions ; words full of pith and vigour, driven home 
 into the hearts of his hearers, uttered without notes, 
 and yet always concise and connected. Once a 
 quarter the Church of England Working Men's 
 Society used to attend and swell the numbers 
 very considerably, yet all would be over before eight 
 o'clock, when a Celebration followed at the altar in 
 the choir. 
 
 He was wonderfully rapid in his utterance, and yet 
 perfectly distinct and reverent. On one occasion 
 when by accident he was alone at the seven o'clock 
 Celebration and there were more than seventy 
 communicants, he had concluded the service by 
 eight.
 
 1893 SHORTER SERVICES 325 
 
 Another addition he made to the services was a 
 short address on Saints' days and festivals given 
 after evensong in the retrochoir. The last words 
 he ever uttered in the Cathedral were heard at one 
 of these a few days before his death. But one 
 change which he effected after he had been at 
 Lincoln some little time, brought upon him a good 
 deal of censure, although his object was simply to 
 relieve the clergy and people from what was thought 
 a wearisome length of service. On Sundays matins 
 in the Cathedral choir consisted of course of a full 
 choral service, with anthem, litany, and introit, and 
 a sermon, which, preached by a prebendary in his 
 turn, did not as a rule incline to brevity ; then a 
 Celebration of Holy Communion. Frequently the 
 clock struck twelve before the Nicene Creed was 
 finished, and very often a congregation which went 
 in at half-past ten did not leave the Cathedral till 
 past one. The question arose how it could be 
 shortened. No one had the power to limit the 
 sermon, and the precentor was expected to provide 
 on Sundays a musical service superior to those on 
 ordinary week days, and consequently of greater 
 length. 
 
 Dean Butler thereupon proposed to remove the 
 litany from the morning to the afternoon, and in 
 place of evensong at four in the choir, to have the 
 litany with an anthem and hymn at that hour in 
 the nave. He contended that as evensong was now 
 sung in the nave at half-past six, it was not needful 
 to have it as well in the choir at four. Of course
 
 326 LINCOLN 
 
 the removal of the litany, and having the shortened 
 form of matins, ending at the third collect, greatly 
 reduced the length of the services, but the Dean 
 came in for a considerable amount of censure ; he 
 was accused of creating * fancy services,' which 
 any one who knew him would know was the last 
 thing he was likely to do. Many who had repeatedly 
 cried out against the length of the morning service 
 now affected to regard the disappearance of the 
 four o'clock evensong as a positive spiritual priva- 
 tion, and remonstrances, not always of the gentlest 
 nature, poured in upon him. He however held 
 firm to his purpose and effected it, though the oppo- 
 sition surprised him, and seemed to him, considering 
 the circumstances, unreasonable. 
 
 I have dwelt rather at length on these points, 
 because they illustrate Dean Butler's mind as regards 
 the use of Cathedrals. He was never weary of saying 
 that in these days public opinion would not tolerate 
 such institutions unless they were put to a thorough 
 practical use. He was much amused, and I think 
 rather gratified, to hear that some one had compared 
 Lincoln Cathedral on Sundays to Clapham Junction, 
 on account of the rapid succession of services ; and in 
 a letter to the Spectator, in answer to a rather deprec- 
 iatory criticism of Deans and Cathedrals, he says : 
 
 In one Cathedral with which I am best acquainted the Sunday 
 services are as follows : Holy Communion, eight ; matins, followed 
 by Holy Communion and sermon, 10.30; sermon without sen-ice, 
 three; litany and anthem, four; evensong and sermon, 6.30. 
 I do not see how much more than this can be got into the day.
 
 1893 GIFTS TO THE CATHEDRAL 
 
 327 
 
 Something must be said of the wonderful trans- 
 formation which he effected in the appearance of the 
 sanctuary. Any one who can recall the former 
 condition of things will appreciate the change. He 
 never rested till a more suitable and dignified altar 
 had been set up, 1 and by degrees he procured a set 
 of frontals for the different seasons, as well as a 
 proper supply of altar linen. Personal gifts came 
 in, such as vases and candlesticks, and the students 
 of the Bishop's Hostel gave a splendid cross. The 
 altar rails were moved westward to their original 
 position, and Persian carpets took the place of the 
 ladies' handiwork, which now is in the Lady Chapel 
 at the east end of the retrochoir. He used some- 
 times to reckon up with positive glee the cost of the 
 various gifts and improvements, and rejoice that 
 there was nothing now mean, cheap, or shabby in 
 the adornment of the sanctuary. One more change 
 must be mentioned, for it was very characteristic 
 of him. He noticed that the prebendaries and 
 priest-vicars very seldom had an opportunity of 
 celebrating the Holy Communion, and, indeed, up 
 to his coming their services were not likely to be 
 required by a Dean and four residentiary Canons 
 when there was only one Celebration on a Sunday. 
 He therefore arranged for a weekly Celebration on 
 Thursdays at eight A.M., for which a rota of pre- 
 bendaries and priest-vicars was responsible. This 
 
 a The new altar was set in its place on February 10, 1888, and 
 he came into the Deanery saying he had kept his seventieth birthday 
 by helping the workmen to lift up the great marble slab.
 
 328 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 was held at the altar under the great east window 
 in the Lady Chapel, and he never missed attending 
 it if in Lincoln, as a simple worshipper in his 
 cassock, only putting on a surplice when his services 
 were needed. 
 
 Turning from the Cathedral to the city, it will be 
 well to hear Canon Fowler's recollections, who, as 
 head master of the Lincoln Grammar school, was 
 frequently brought in contact with the Dean. 
 
 Dean Butler was singularly happy in his relations with the 
 citizens of Lincoln of all denominations ; that Church people 
 should have looked up to him, and not only reverenced him, 
 but loved him, is natural ; but the affectionate regard for his 
 memory which has been, and is now shown by the non- 
 comformists of the city, speaks, as nothing else could speak; 
 of that true charity and willingness to recognise good work 
 of any kind, which were among the noticeable traits of his 
 character. No man could have been a more staunch upholder 
 of Church principles, no man could have been more opposed 
 to the spirit of Dissent, but he knew exactly where to draw 
 the line, and kept strictly to it. While, on the one hand, he 
 abstained from anything that might seem in the least degree 
 an yielding of a vital point, while he was quite ready to maintain 
 his views in language which from its evident sincerity and 
 the kindness of its expression, never gave permanent offence ; 
 yet on the other, he avoided that petty and vexatious opposi- 
 tion which tends so largely to embitter the relations between 
 Churchmen and Dissenters. Perhaps in the city of Lincoln he 
 found this an easier matter than he might have done elsewhere, 
 for there are few towns in which the members of various 
 denominations are more inclined to 'agree to differ,' and to 
 live together in a friendly spirit; this is, in great measure, 
 due to the veneration felt by all for the Minster, which is 
 regarded by the whole body of citizens as belonging personally 
 to each individual, and to be, as it were, outside the region of 
 denominationalism ; partly, perhaps we may allow, it was this 
 very feeling that drew Dean Butler towards the nonconformists,
 
 1893 CANON FOWLER'S RECOLLECTIONS 329 
 
 for to love the Minster, and to take an interest in its services, 
 was a sure way to his heart; but on the other hand it must 
 not be forgotten that it was Dean Butler's own action in 
 extending the usefulness of the Minster by establishing the 
 largely-attended evening services, and by the personal interest 
 which he took in the congregations as shown by his strong, 
 direct yet simple sermons, that largely increased the affectionate 
 feelings of the citizens towards the Cathedral. 
 
 As an instance of what has been said above, we may perhaps 
 mention the lecture on 'Alfred the Great,' which he delivered 
 to a nonconformist audience at the hall attached to the Newland 
 Independent Chapel, which was very much appreciated by those 
 who heard it, both on account of its interest, and still more 
 perhaps on account of the kindly spirit in which it was given. 
 
 Dean Butler took a leading part in the erection of the present 
 Lincoln School of Science and Art, and also in the Lincolnshire 
 Exhibition in the Jubilee year, which accompanied its opening ; 
 and he was also a strong supporter of the Free Library movement 
 which has been since crowned with success. While at Wantage 
 he always took a great interest in the Volunteer movement, and 
 for many years he was chaplain to the Berkshire Volunteers ; 
 he continued this interest at Lincoln, and used regularly to 
 entertain the officers of the Lincoln companies, with whom he 
 was very popular. 
 
 In" all matters connected with the education of the city he 
 was always to the fore, and it need hardly be said how strongly 
 he felt with regard to the maintenance of the voluntary system ; 
 had he lived, nothing would have given him greater pleasure 
 than the successful issue of the efforts of the Subdean and the 
 educational committee, by which we may hope that the 
 voluntary system has been preserved for Lincoln for many 
 years to come. 
 
 At no time in the history of the city have the relations 
 between the corporation and the Cathedral been more satis- 
 factory ; this has by no means always been the case, for at 
 times in the past the feelings of the two bodies towards each 
 other have been unequivocally hostile. Dean Butler, in his 
 speeches as well as by his action, always emphasised the 
 necessity of the preservation of amicable relations between the 
 Minster and the civic authorities. It has been said that it
 
 330 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 was he who initiated the desirable state of affairs which exists 
 at present; this is hardly true, for much was done by the 
 late Archbishop of Canterbury, when Chancellor, and by other 
 members of the Chapter, and the two bodies have been for 
 years drawing closer together. There can, however, be no 
 doubt that by his geniality and straightforwardness he helped 
 very greatly to remove any old feelings of soreness, and that 
 it is to the late Dean and to the present Bishop that the 
 mutual regard now existing between the Cathedral and the 
 city is largely due. 
 
 Much more might be said with regard to Dean Butler's 
 public connexion with the citizens of Lincoln; nothing failed 
 to interest him and call forth his support, which appeared to 
 him as likely to benefit the city of his adoption. We must not, 
 however, forget his private relations with individuals ; he had 
 a keen eye for character, and any man who did his work as 
 he ought, whether with hand or head, was made to feel that 
 he had a friend to whom he might go for help and advice at 
 any time. How people of all sorts and conditions regarded 
 him was clearly shown at his funeral, at which the Minster 
 was crowded with high and low, rich and poor, who by their 
 evident sorrow expressed the deep sense of personal loss which 
 was felt by all with whom he had been brought at all closely 
 into contact. In this short notice, it is not for me to speak 
 of the inner life of the Deanery; but the kindly hospitality 
 and warm welcome ever accorded by the Dean and his family, 
 are still fresh in the hearts of many. A Cathedral city is 
 always reputed to be exclusive, and it was one of the late 
 Dean's great desires to break this exclusiveness down, and to 
 bring people more closely together. 
 
 As I am only touching briefly upon a partial side of the 
 Dean's life in Lincoln, I must not write more. All through 
 his life, in things secular as well as sacred, his watchword 
 was ' Thorough ' ; wherever he found thoroughness and sincerity, 
 he was ever ready to recognise and encourage good work, even 
 though he might not agree with the result aimed at; hence 
 his success in dealing with his parishioners and his fellow- 
 townsmen. Whatsoever his hand found to do, he did it with 
 his might ; yet with his simple rugged and loving nature, he 
 if any man, felt that the might was that of his Lord and
 
 1893 HOLIDAYS ABROAD 331 
 
 Master, and that the smallest as well as the greatest efforts 
 of his life were dependent upon Him alone. 
 
 I have said that letters illustrating Dean Butler's 
 life at Lincoln are not so plentiful as at other periods. 
 His work of course was very different from that at 
 Wantage, and he had not so much to construct as to 
 quicken and stimulate. His great refreshment was 
 his annual six weeks' holiday, which until the last 
 year of his life he spent abroad. He enjoyed travel- 
 ling intensely. Nothing seemed to escape his eye ; 
 and on looking through his letters written to me 
 during these tours I am astonished at the wonderful 
 descriptive power displayed, as well as the minuteness 
 of detail. 
 
 In August, 1886, he wTote from Tyrol, and after 
 telling me that "so far all is better than well," 
 he adds, " We have many a good laugh to help 
 digestion, and no lack of topics for conversation. 
 We could not stand ' table d'h6te ' meals, and gene- 
 rally contrive to get a separate table, where good 
 behaviour is not ' de rigueur.' ' 
 
 I think that the Dean's light-heartedness helped 
 to keep him so fresh through his laborious life. A 
 holiday to him was a real pleasure. I remember the 
 first Easter Monday he was at Lincoln, how he 
 enjoyed giving himself a holiday from his letters, 
 and making a complete tour of the Cathedral an 
 enjoyment as simple and unaffected as that of a 
 schoolboy released from lessons. 
 
 In July and August, 1887, he wrote from Switzer- 
 land. He was staying for a week or two at Vevey,
 
 332 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 which he found " very hot" and the " air oppressive " ; 
 and, he adds, " religion in these parts seems to be 
 quite a secondary matter, very unlike Tyrol where 
 churches and shrines meet you everywhere. Protest- 
 antism is entirely dead in Germany and Switzerland." 
 
 Shortly after, he writes from Grindelwald. I 
 suppose that I had been mentioning some plan of 
 going abroad early in the following year, for he says, 
 " I hope that you will be able to make your visit 
 to Pau after Christmas, so long as you clear Lent. 
 Perhaps I am over-sensitive about Lent and Holy 
 Week. But it always appears to me inconsistent 
 with our profession as priests to be larking about 
 the world and amusing ourselves at these special 
 times. My practice has always been one good 
 holiday. Five Sundays was the length of my tether 
 once a year, and perhaps a little run, the inside of 
 a week, in the form of a visit to my mother or 
 some relations, after Christmas and Easter, when I was 
 tolerably used up." 
 
 In May, 1889, he wrote from Florence: "We 
 eased our journey by stopping at Laon, which is 
 reached at 7.30 P.M. There is a good deal to see 
 there of one or other kind, and Mr. Waddington, 
 the French Ambassador, whom I had met there 
 before, took us into the French Conseil General of 
 the Department, which is interesting just now when 
 we are introducing the same system into England. 
 The speakers, to my surprise, were much quieter 
 than our folk, and delivered their sentiments sitting. 
 It was frightfully dull."
 
 1893 A SERIOUS ACCIDENT 333 
 
 In the spring of 1890 he wrote to me from Siena 
 and Florence. He delighted in the pictures, especi- 
 ally those of the Sienese school, and says, " I still 
 enjoy the Sienese painters' reverence and simplicity, 
 and I seem to learn more from this school than from 
 any other. But it cannot be denied that in force and 
 colouring the Florentines have the palm." 
 
 He visited Pisa and its Campo Santo, Cathedral, 
 and Leaning Tower, " up which I clambered for the 
 first time." 
 
 He ends his letter : " Will you kindly look in at 
 the Deanery some day and see how my old butler 
 is. I heard a poor account of him, and I am always 
 afraid of his passing away without spiritual help." 
 This was Charles Page, an old servant to whom the 
 Dean was much attached. He was in his service as a 
 youth before the Dean went to Wantage. He died 
 within a few months of completing fifty years of faith- 
 ful service, the year before the death of his master, 
 who was away from Lincoln at the time, and I was 
 sent for to minister to him. The Dean returned just 
 in time to see him still alive and conscious. 
 
 In April, 1891, the Dean met with a serious 
 accident. He had arranged to go abroad directly 
 after Easter with two of his daughters. They were 
 at the Charing Cross station, their tickets taken, and 
 everything ready for a start. The Dean had gone 
 to a book shop in the neighbourhood, and while re- 
 turning to the station was knocked down by a cab 
 and had his left arm broken. It is very characteristic 
 of him that directly he rose from the ground he said,
 
 334 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 " Take that man's number." He at once told them 
 to take him to the nearest hospital, where his daugh- 
 ters found him shortly after. It was a severe dis- 
 appointment to be balked of his pleasant holiday, 
 but he was not one who fretted against the inevit- 
 able. The following letters (written in pencil) to 
 Sir Charles Anderson, an old friend whom he greatly 
 valued, and to his sister, describe the situation : 
 
 CHARING CROSS HOSPITAL, April 10, 1891. 
 
 MY VERY DEAR AND KIND SlR CHARLES, This is only the 
 fourth letter that I have attempted to achieve, so that you will 
 understand that it was from necessity or incapacity only that 
 your very kind letter has been so long left unanswered. It 
 cheered me very much. This is a strange, but really not an 
 unpleasant experience. The kindness and skill of the doctors 
 and nurses are quite extraordinary. I tell every one that I 
 have fallen into a nest of angels. I have comparatively little 
 pain, and all the arrangements here are of the best kind. I 
 have a very pleasant private room, and Mrs. Butler and my 
 daughters are here the greatest part of the day. Many old 
 friends visit me, and on the whole I begin to think myself 
 rather a humbug, as if I had invited the accident for the 
 purpose of extracting sympathy. But I must own that to find 
 oneself with the heels of a horse close to one's head, and the 
 wheel of a hansom cab close to one's body, is not a delightful 
 situation." 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS SISTER. 
 
 THE HOSPITAL, CHARING CROSS, April 16, 1891. 
 
 It seems unnatural not to have written to you before, but 
 I write under difficulties and one long stream of kind friends, 
 day after day, have absorbed the time. 
 
 This is a strange reversal of hopes and plans, but I do not 
 grudge it, for it has brought me into contact with a whole 
 body of the kindest and most unselfish people that I ever met. 
 This hospital is very well managed, and there is a tone of 
 refinement everywhere, from the splendid woman who commands
 
 1893 IN THE HOSPITAL 335 
 
 the institution down to the youngest probationer. The surgeons 
 too are, I believe, considered very skilful, and most attentive. 
 So that all things considered I have every reason to be very 
 thankful. I have moreover a very pleasant room, and so many 
 flowers arrive that I am able to benefit some of my neighbours. 
 
 Still of course this must be a long affair. I allow four 
 months before I am able to enjoy life once more. At present I 
 cannot unbutton a wristband, crack an egg, or wind up a 
 watch. 
 
 We hope to settle ourselves on Monday at 19 Sussex 
 Gardens. One of the nurses goes with us, for without such 
 
 help I can do nothing. My arm is in a plaster of Paris case a 
 
 most unpleasant experience. . . . 
 
 I saw him in the hospital, and he was full of 
 interest in the nurses and their spiritual welfare. 
 He was giving copies of the Christian Year to 
 some, and spoke with the utmost warmth of the 
 kindness he had met with from the hospital staff. 
 After he left the hospital he wrote a letter to the 
 Times, strongly urging the claims of the hospital 
 for support. 
 
 I received what he calls his " first ink- written 
 letter," dated April 27. He had moved into a 
 friend's house, and although his arm did not then 
 pain him so much, he suffered much from coughing 
 at night ; but he adds, " Certainly I have that 
 solace which Shakespeare suggests for old age, 'troops 
 of friends.' " 
 
 His delayed holiday was taken in August. He 
 went to Normandy, and I had letters from him 
 from Rouen, Bayeux, and Falaise. 
 
 Writing from Rouen, August 10, he says : 
 
 It is very amusing to me to find myself here. In the
 
 336 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 year 1840 I came to this place, having just taken my degree, 
 when railways were almost unknown on the continent, and 
 one had to travel to Paris in a diligence. . . . Afterwards I 
 came to Rouen in 1843, a few days after my marriage, and 
 about this time of year, once since, in 1858, when we made 
 our first expedition into Brittany. . . . Two of the Wantage 
 sisters met us with a retinue of schoolgirls, whom they are 
 taking to various parts for a holiday trip. They had made 
 acquaintance with the Cure of S. Ouen who had been most 
 polite, and showed them about. He quite understood our 
 position ecclesiastically, and wrote for them to the Mother 
 Superior of the Sisters of "S. Vincent de Paul, to whom he 
 introduced them. I rather hope to see him, and get from 
 him some idea of the real condition of things in France. 
 
 On the 18th August he wrote from Bayeux : 
 
 I was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of the 
 Cure of S. Ouen. 1 . . . He is a most agreeable and intelligent 
 man. One of the few who really understand and enter into 
 the Anglican position. ' H n'y a qu un cheveu entre nous.' And 
 when we parted he loaded us with good photographs." 
 
 At Falaise, on August 27, he writes : 
 
 On Tuesday we did well ; we took a carriage from Avranches 
 and drove to Mt. S. Michel. The day was cold but quite 
 sunny and bright, and we saw that wonderful place to great 
 advantage. On the whole I think it the most striking building 
 in Europe. . . . We have been roaming over the Castle of 
 Falaise and took refuge from a storm in the bedroom of 
 Arlette mother of Wm. Conquestor. ... I lament over the 
 death of Mr. Raikes. He was one of the few M.P.'s on whom 
 all the Church could depend. 
 
 In 1892 he again visited France. He wrote from 
 Fontainebleau, July 13 : 
 
 We are just opposite the old historical Chateau full of 
 memories of kings and queens, and 'mistresses' such as Diane 
 of Poitiers, for whose honour or dishonour Henry II. built a 
 splendid salon. 
 
 ^e visited the Dean at Lincoln in the summer of 1893.
 
 1893 A HOLIDAY IN SCOTLAND 337 
 
 This was the last of his foreign trips. In 1893 
 he went to Scotland. I am indebted to an intimate 
 friend of his for the following account of the days he 
 spent in his company : 
 
 I remember the Dean coming to me and saying that he was 
 thinking of going to Scotland for his holidays, and asking for 
 information about the West Coast, as he thought of going north 
 instead of, as usual, to the continent. He said that owing 
 to Mrs. Butler's health he did not like to leave her, and that 
 she was not strong enough to go abroad. I recommended him 
 to the immediate neighbourhood of Fort William, and from my 
 description of the locality he said it was just what he wanted. 
 Shortly afterwards he went there with Mrs. Butler, one of his 
 daughters, and a granddaughter. Some fortnight or three 
 weeks later I followed him with some of my family. I found 
 him delighted with the beautiful country, the equally beautiful 
 church, and the people. It was wonderful how quickly he had 
 made friends with all classes. A few days later we moved on 
 together to Spean Bridge, where we were due to pay a visit 
 to some old friends, the Dean and his party going to the hotel 
 there. As our friends, however, knew the Butlers (having met 
 them at Lincoln), we still saw a great deal of them ; and the Dean 
 entered thoroughly into all that was going on, walking with 
 us when shooting, and joining us on the river. 
 
 One day he started walking with us at ten o'clock, and al- 
 though the day was very hot and the ground rough, he walked 
 as well as the best; and at lunch on high ground over 1500 
 feet he was quite fresh. To be out all day under somewhat 
 trying conditions of weather and ground, and to have made a 
 very considerable ascent, was a feat for a man of his age. The 
 following day was Sunday. He was not tired with his exertions, 
 and was quite ready for another hard day's work. He celebrated 
 the Holy Communion at eight A.M., and read the morning service 
 at ten. Soon after that service he said he wanted a long walk, 
 and he, our host, his granddaughter, and I started for a pass 
 in the hills some ten miles off. We had to take our lunch 
 with us, and I made the Dean quite angry because I would not 
 allow him to carry the bag! We had a beautiful, but very 
 
 Y
 
 338 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 hot walk ; but the whole way the Dean was in the highest spirits. 
 On our return he said, ' Be quick and change, we have just time 
 for evensong.' Not many men, I think, could do two such days' 
 work at seventy -five. 
 
 I remember one afternoon we went to Glen Roy to see the 
 parallel roads, and these interested him greatly. He insisted 
 on going up the hillside and on to all the three ' roads.' 
 
 I am sure he enjoyed himself in Lochaber thoroughly. He 
 interested himself much, as I have said, in the people, and he 
 gave great attention to all he heard of the Crofter question, 
 of which he took a very impartial view. 
 
 He began to learn Gaelic as soon as he arrived in the High- 
 lands, and he bought a Bible, prayer-book, grammar, and 
 dictionary. He tried to learn something of the language from 
 every one he met, and he succeeded in learning the Lord's 
 prayer. On one occasion he upset the usually grave deportment 
 of a native servant by suddenly repeating it at dinner for the 
 benefit of his family ! 
 
 When he left Lochaber after a stay of about a month, he 
 went by the coach, which then ran from Fort William to 
 Kingussie, for the sake of the very beautiful drive of forty 
 miles. His care for Mrs. Butler caused him to make all ex- 
 cursions by driving, as otherwise she could not have seen the 
 country, and the fine drive to Kingussie was therefore an 
 appropriate end to a holiday which we little thought then was 
 his last. 
 
 Some correspondence belonging to these last years 
 may be introduced here. 
 
 W. J. B. TO Miss C. M. YONGE. 
 
 THE PALACE, ELY, Sept. 19, 1886. 
 
 It was very pleasant to see a letter directed by your hand and 
 addressed to me. I am afraid however that ungratefully I 
 thought how much pleasanter it would be to see yourself in the 
 flesh. We want you more than I can say to visit St. Hugh and 
 all the wonders of Lincoln. Do think about it. I wish that I 
 could have fulfilled your bidding. I should have felt much 
 honoured in doing so. But I never go when I can get off
 
 1893 VIEWS ON 'MISSIONS' 
 
 339 
 
 to Church Congresses ; and, fortunately for me, the Bishop of 
 Ripon wrote to me to ask me to speak when all my days were 
 occupied. ... I am most glad that you decline to appear 
 on platforms. These platform women are doing much harm 
 to themselves, and to society at large. In fact, the line which 
 some of them [take], and I fear a good many more, is one of 
 the worst symptoms of the present age. Satan is striking at 
 the citadel which women are. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO MlSS C. M. YONGE. 
 
 'THE DEANERY, LINCOLN, Feb. 27, 1887. 
 
 It is rather remarkable that I was so much exercised by the 
 account of the Droxfield ' Mission ' as incontinently to write to 
 The Guardian. It is probable that you will see my letter on 
 Thursday. And I begin, " As one brought up in the school 
 of Mr. Keble and Dr. Pusey." You are quite right so far as 
 
 I am able to judge and is on a very dangerous tack. 
 
 is no theologian. He is a very worthy and devout man, 
 
 but essentially a ' sentimentalist.' I have seen his little books. 
 . . . But after glancing at them I saw plainly that they were 
 not made of the right stuff, but belonged to that dangerous 
 Lutheran school which has done more harm than any other 
 even than Calvinism because it exactly suits the instincts of 
 the natural man. If I understand Christianity aright, it is 
 directed equally against the two great crying sins pride and 
 sloth. Therefore first of all it claims that every proud thought 
 shall be brought down, and next that men should take up their 
 cross and follow Christ that is, lead a life of effort and struggle. 
 Pride is humbled by the institution of the ministry of man to 
 man use of sacraments obedience to the Church. But 
 Lutheranism ignores all this, and actually stimulates human 
 pride by enabling them to assert that they are saved. And 
 the attack upon ' works ' is the answer to ' take up the cross.' 
 Thus by substituting a gospel which is not a gospel, it contrives 
 neatly to neutralise Christianity. Then is it justifiable to claim 
 forgiveness before repentance is made certain? But how can 
 this be brought about by merely listening to an ecstatic sermon 
 the feelings stimulated and no 'fruits meet' brought 
 forth 1
 
 340 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 This new development of ' High Churchism ' causes me great 
 uneasiness. It is the old story. People will not be patient 
 forget that ' stare super antiquas vias ' is the only safe principle 
 daub their walls with untempered mortar, and rejoice in the 
 shallow results forgetting that the ' great hailstones ' will 
 sooner or later fall. 
 
 For my own part, I should say that in a parish like yours 
 a mission could not be advisable. If the quiet regular pastor's 
 visits, and the well-cared-for schools, and the frequent services 
 will not meet the case, then nothing will. The church may be 
 filled for a certain number of services, and a certain number of 
 people may be stirred, etc. But all the real result could be 
 produced much more healthily and thoroughly, though not so 
 showily, by the regular parochial routine. . . . 
 
 This is the letter to which he refers : 
 
 EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION AT MISSIONS. 
 
 SIR, As one brought up in the school of men like Mr. Keble 
 and Dr. Pusey and others of the same mind, I feel bound to 
 enter my humble protest against the doings of " the Mission of 
 the very remarkable character," held at Shedfield, near Botley, 
 Hants, and described in the last Guardian. I read these words : 
 
 " When, towards the close, those who felt they had received 
 forgiveness of their sins, and had chosen Christ for their Master, 
 were asked to give a sign by standing up or holding up their 
 hands (while all the congregation were kneeling with their eyes 
 covered) the number was very large." 
 
 Have we really descended so low as this ? Is this the theology 
 of the Church of England ? Did the " extempore preacher of 
 great power and ability " imagine that such demonstrations have 
 anything of real worth ? How did these people know that they 
 had received forgiveness for their sins ? Must not repentance 
 precede forgiveness, and what proofs had they given of anything 
 like true repentance such as ought to satisfy themselves or 
 others 1 If the eloquent gentleman who held them "spellbound" 
 would study an honestly written life of John Wesley, such as 
 Abbey and Overton, or Lecky have described it, or if he would 
 make himself acquainted with what is called " Kevival work in 
 America," he would find that it is a comparatively easy matter,
 
 1893 FROM THE HIGHLANDS 341 
 
 yet not without considerable danger, to kindle emotional expres- 
 sion, but very difficult to lay the real foundation of a Christian 
 life. WILLIAM BUTLER. 
 
 THE DEANERY, LINCOLN, February 26, 1887. 
 
 W. J. B. TO MISS C. M. YONGE. 
 
 BUCCLECGH VILLA, FORT WILLIAM, 
 Aug. 19, 1893. 
 
 Let me add my word of mindfulness and love to the many 
 which have come to you at this time. The reason why my 
 name was not among those who sent the address to you was 
 simply because, in the deep affection and reverence which I 
 feel towards you, it did not appear to me sufficient for the 
 occasion. Few can realise like me, who remember you a bonny 
 young maiden riding your pony to Hursley, what you have 
 been and what you have done, how you have maintained the 
 good old ways of Mr. Keble and the Tracts for the Times, and 
 how freely you have offered of your best 'pro Ecclesia Dei.' 
 I am afraid to say more. You would say that the Keble mind 
 abhors praise. But I just wished to explain what might possibly 
 have seemed to you strange, considering the friendship with 
 which you have so long honoured me, and which I appreciate 
 more than words can say. 
 
 We are here in the heart of the Highlands, close to Inverlochy 
 Castle where Montrose defeated Argyll as Sir Walter Scott 
 tells in the Legend of Montrose, and twelve miles from Glencoe, 
 which we visited on Monday a wild, savage glen, though hardly 
 so savage as William's soldiers. We have in face of us Loch 
 Linnhe and the mountains beyond, and at our back Ben Nevis 
 frowns upon us, though he has used us gently, sparing us the 
 cold and wet with which generally he treats his guests. . . . 
 Very earnestly I pray that God's blessing may rest upon you, 
 and give you health and strength and joy and peace in this 
 present time, and the reward of faithful service hereafter. 
 
 W. J. B. TO MRS. WILKINS. 
 
 THE DEANERY, LINCOLN, Feb. 15, 1887. 
 
 ... In the nature of things I can hardly hope to see many 
 more birthdays. I have now nearly " finished my course." And
 
 342 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 certainly my greatest happiness lies in the thought that, humanly 
 speaking, Wantage will enjoy good Church teaching for many a 
 long year, and that as one generation follows another the love of 
 Christ and His Church strengthens rather than weakens. There 
 is nothing like it to bring out the best stuff that there is in 
 every one. Not only does it make people good, but it makes 
 them clever and capable. See how well our Wantage lads do 
 in London. . . . Why ? Because they have learnt the real 
 gospel not the sham thing that people call the gospel, all 
 feelings and rubbish, but the gospel which Christ taught, which 
 commands men to use the means of grace, to accept the ministra- 
 tions of God's ministers, and to obey the Church. All this 
 is definite and clear, something that one can understand. But 
 "Come to Christ" what does that mean? Or "Have you 
 found peace?" to which a very holy man, a friend of mine, 
 replied, " No, / have found war," meaning that a Christian man 
 has to fight if he is to hold his own. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO MRS. WILKINS. 
 
 THE DEANERY, LINCOLN, Feb. 11, 1888. 
 
 ... It is now forty-one years since I first settled down 
 in Wantage in bitter cold weather, and deep snow lying on 
 the ground. You remember the old vicarage a tumble-down 
 old house, with thin walls, through which the snails used to 
 find their way into our drawing-room. My study was upstairs, 
 and the labouring men used to clamber up, and leave plenty 
 of their traces on the staircase and the landing. 1 In 1850 we 
 got into the present vicarage, and a wonderful comfort it was 
 to have over our head a good solid roof, and pleasant rooms 
 to live in. We thought ourselves in great state when we got 
 there. That was altogether a remarkable year, for besides the 
 vicarage, we had the new schools opened, and laid the first 
 stone of the Grammar School, and consecrated the cemetery. 
 I little thought in those days of being Canon or Dean. All 
 
 a One of those labouring men, meeting him on one of his visits to 
 Wantage, observed, " Ye be main changed since I remembers you, 
 sir." "Well, Bill, I useu't to wear a shovel hat and gaiters." "Nay, 
 it's not that, sir, but ye be getting an old man." The Dean related 
 this story with infinite delight.
 
 1893 RECALLING OLD TIMES 
 
 343 
 
 that I asked for was not to be persecuted just to be let alone, 
 to work out my plans for the Church and parish. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO MRS. WILKINS. 
 
 THE DEANERY, LINCOLN, Feb. 11, 1889. 
 
 . . . Certainly there is no place which I love to be in so 
 much as my old parish, and I quite agree with you in loving 
 the old church. There are much finer churches in the county, 
 and there are others in other places more decorated and 
 beautified, but for dignity and homeliness combined I know 
 none which equals ours. It is now 31 \ years since it was 
 restored. What a fight I had to get it done ! Do you re- 
 member how some put about that we were going to "ruin 
 the dear old parish church"? This was said and printed by 
 some who did not care a farthing for the church, but who 
 wanted to oppose any attempt to make things better. And 
 then there was that vestry in 1852, when all the roughs in 
 the place came to make a noise and bully. This is a very 
 good example of how "the gates of hell cannot prevail against 
 the Church," for in 1857 the work was done and well done. 
 And many of those who had most opposed it ... were 
 ashamed of themselves and came round. So I believe it will 
 be in the case of our good Bishop of Lincoln. "The waves 
 of the sea are mighty and rage horribly, but He that dwelleth 
 on high is mightier." Yet it is, as you say, a cruel attack. 
 . . . The only move that I shall ever make from this will 
 be, in all probability, to my last earthly home. So that you 
 must not think of Bishoprics for me. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO MRS. WILKINS. 
 
 THE DEANERY, LINCOLN, Feb. 11, 1892. 
 
 . . . The old vicarage was a queer old place, parts of it 
 five hundred years old, very draughty and inconvenient. Then 
 that summer came small-pox, and we had many cases. Our 
 nurse had it very badly. She was always marked by it. I 
 got some credit because I visited the people regularly, while 
 the Wesleyan preacher took panic and went away. That was 
 useful in the beginning of my ministry, especially as I took a 
 new line of services and the like, [different] from those who 
 had gone before me. . . .
 
 344 LINCOLN 1885- 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS SISTER. 
 
 THE MEAD, WANTAGE, Feb. 14, 1890. 
 
 . . . You are fortunate in not having the avalanche of letters 
 which overwhelms me when my birthday arrives. Half the 
 school mistresses in England (to speak with some little 
 hyperbole) have noted it down, and write kind words which 
 alas ! must be acknowledged to say nothing of the children 
 at the Wantage schools, pupil-teachers, etc. It is certainly 
 very pleasant to be met with affection, but, like good taste, 
 it has to be paid for. 
 
 I spent the last three days partly in Convocation, where we 
 carried a bold proposal, viz., 'that the Brotherhoods' which 
 formed the subject of our discussion should be allowed to 
 take 'dispensable vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience.' 
 We had, as you may suppose, a good fight. Amendment after 
 amendment was moved, argued out and lost, and at last we 
 carried it triumphantly. It is so ridiculous to water down 
 old words, which bear with them a certain attractive ring, 
 likely to draw enthusiastic hearts. . . . 
 
 W. J. B. TO HIS SISTER. 
 
 HOTEL BUDAN, SAUMUR, July 27, 1892. 
 
 . . . Well, we have lived for nearly three weeks in the midst 
 of Renaissance chateaux, and towns. We have seen Compiegne 
 and its forests, Fontainebleau and its gardens, Blois and its 
 ' escalier ' and murder chamber, Chambord and its ' tristesse,' 
 Loches and its dungeons, besides various pleasant little, though 
 not very little, inhabited houses, de Beauregard, Chevernay, 
 Azay le Kideau, whose owners are good enough to let visitors 
 enter. I must not forget perhaps the best of them all, 
 Chenonceaux springing from the river Cher, and full of Diana 
 of Poitiers and our old friend Catherine de Medicis. We have 
 worked up our French and can very nearly repeat the names 
 of the Valois kings, and we know something of their wives 
 and of those whom, sad to say, they preferred to their wives. 
 They were a very bad lot and I must say, that always 
 excepting Henry VIII. , and perhaps Charles and James II., 
 our kings and queens look like saints by their side. Still, 
 they knew how to build and decorate and plant, and though
 
 1893 ON THE LOIRE 345 
 
 Eenaissance work has a good deal of the earthly and carnal in 
 it, one cannot deny the deft-fingeredness or the imagination of 
 its designs. Salamanders, long-backed dogs, swans with arrows 
 in their breasts, pelicans, and porcupines, are the animals with 
 whom we have made most acquaintance. Now we are in a 
 very different region. Plantagenets and Angevins are our 
 hosts. We visited yesterday Fontevrault, where Henry II. 
 and the spiteful Eleanor and Richard Coeur de Lion lie, and 
 we spent the night at Chinon, the favourite resort of that race. 
 The Plantagenet castle is gone, still the foundation remains 
 of the walls, but the huge interior is become a vineyard. But 
 there are still to be seen the salle in which Charles VII. first 
 greeted la Pucelle, and the tower in which the dear saint was 
 lodged during her stay at Chinon. If the Pope would call 
 her a Saint, there would be some more reason than in the 
 case of some of those who bear the name in the Roman calendar. 
 . . . The worst of these French towns is their pavement, 
 sometimes even, sometimes rough, but always and everywhere 
 large stones, half a foot square, which make every wheelbarrow 
 sound like a train. People moreover are early birds, and the 
 noise, which does not cease till near eleven, begins before 
 five. .
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE LAST YEARS. 
 
 I WILL try now to describe Dean Butler as he 
 was in relation to the Cathedral ; but it is not easy 
 work. He was so entirely unlike the conventional 
 Dean. The charge of ' dying of dignity ' could not 
 be laid against him, although he knew perfectly 
 well how to hold his own and check a liberty. It 
 was a surprise to find oneself told not to ring the 
 front door bell when one wanted to see him, but 
 to come straight into the house by the private 
 entrance from the cloister, and knock at his study 
 door. It was his way at Wantage, he said, with 
 his curates. Soon I found that he liked one to 
 come to him between 9.30 A.M. and 10. Naturally 
 one hesitated to interrupt him at such an hour 
 when he would be in the thick of his correspondence, 
 but he liked it, and so one gradually got into the 
 way of it. Even if one had nothing particular to 
 ask or say, he liked the feeling of having some one 
 with whom to discuss matters, to tell his plans, and 
 often to instruct in the way he wished things to 
 be done.
 
 1885 DAILY LIFE AT LINCOLN 
 
 347 
 
 I learnt very early that the conventional attitude 
 of an ecclesiastical dignitary to a subordinate was 
 not his. On my once quoting some flippant remark 
 that curates and national school masters were thorns 
 in the flesh to the parochial incumbent, he pulled 
 me up quite sharply, " Why, my curates have been 
 always my best and dearest friends." No one can 
 read the verses he wrote on his curates without 
 seeing how true these words were. At Lincoln he 
 took pains to seek out and become acquainted with 
 curates in the city parishes. 
 
 Of course he expected one to work, and he exacted 
 a good deal ; but then he set such an example in 
 himself of unceasing work, that however one might 
 feel inclined to grumble, one felt one's mouth closed 
 by the sight of a man of his age, with a position 
 which invited inactivity, working from morning till 
 night, and yet keeping bright and cheerful through 
 it all. 
 
 Up at six every morning, he set to work at once. 
 Working-men, who knew his early hours, would come 
 to him then with demands on his counsel or help. 
 After his breakfast at 8.30 till ten he would be 
 busy with correspondence. Shoals of letters came 
 from all parts of England. Letters asking advice 
 in spiritual matters would form a large proportion. 
 Letters from clergymen in country parishes asking 
 him to come and cheer them by preaching in their 
 churches on Sundays. Letters from clergymen in 
 distress begging for some pecuniary aid. Letters 
 relating to the numerous branches of the Wantage
 
 348 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 Sisterhood, as far away as India. At all these he 
 would be working hard when one tapped at his study 
 door at about twenty minutes to ten. I hardly ever 
 saw him impatient, though the interruptions to even 
 a ten minutes' talk would be frequent. Sometimes 
 he would be in the middle of an important letter, 
 and would tell me to take the paper and sit down. 
 In a few minutes the letter would be finished, and he 
 would then jump up and stand with his back to 
 the fire, or perch himself on the arm of his Windsor 
 chair, to listen to what one had to say. I never 
 remember being sent away except when he was 
 engaged in some important interview. He would 
 then robe and go to the Cathedral for matins, walking 
 with a quick firm step across the choir, but never 
 omitting a brief but reverent inclination to the altar 
 as he passed. On entering the vestry he would go 
 to the end of the table, and after a few whispered 
 w r ords on any necessary business, he would cover his 
 face with his hand and remain standing in that 
 posture till the hour sounded. It was all in keeping 
 with his intense dislike to anything that savoured 
 of irreverence. He could not endure trivial chat 
 about the morning's paper, politics, or local gossip, 
 just before taking part in Divine service. To him 
 it was a very serious thing, and he earnestly desired 
 that the choir men and choristers should keep as 
 quiet as possible in their respective vestries. If he 
 heard loud talking as he passed by he would stop 
 and say something. He, at any rate, set the example 
 of reverence he wished them to follow. Looking
 
 1 894 A TENDER HEART 349 
 
 back on the nine years during which I was brought 
 into close contact with him, I note some charac- 
 teristics of which the outside world may be ignorant. 
 His was a very grateful nature. In my intercourse 
 with him I could not but be struck with the warmth 
 of gratitude with which he spoke of all who had 
 shown him kindness or helped him. It was after 
 all so little that one could do, but it was enough to 
 make him express himself with the utmost warmth 
 towards all his Lincoln friends, whether belong- 
 ing to the Cathedral or the diocese at large, who 
 had supported him. Again, there was much more 
 softness in his nature than the outside world gave 
 him credit for. Many who only saw him from a 
 stranger's point of view thought him hard, abrupt, 
 unyielding, unsympathising. They did not know 
 what tender fibres lay under that seemingly hard 
 exterior. I can recall now how miserable he was 
 on being told he had unwittingly wounded the feel- 
 ings of a lady by something he had said in her 
 presence, and how he was not to be comforted till he 
 had personally assured her of his regret. 
 
 In speaking of a case where an incumbent was 
 parting with his curate, I heard him say, " I have 
 no doubt he is right in getting rid of him, but I 
 should like it done kindly." After his death the 
 father of a family in writing to me said, " I never 
 knew one who so watched to do kindness to my 
 boys." 1 And again, I was always struck with his 
 
 1 His love for children was very great, and he delighted in producing 
 a little silver box from his pocket, and giving a jujube from it to any
 
 350 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 indifference to public praise in regard to any of the 
 changes he effected in the Cathedral. Once more, he 
 was by no means so unwilling to confess himself 
 wrong as some have thought who judged him by the 
 dogmatic tone of his assertions. 
 
 Certainly he never hesitated to speak his mind, 
 and it was generally made up ; but I have known 
 him more than once retract an opinion and candidly 
 own he was wrong, and many times in discussing 
 some subject on which a difference of opinion might 
 be entertained, he has said, " I may be wrong." Of 
 course, with his large experience of parochial life, 
 he could not fail to have a tolerably well-grounded 
 opinion on most matters connected with a parish, 
 but he by no means looked back on his Wantage 
 life as totally free from mistakes. On the contrary, 
 in talking it over with me, he has said sometimes 
 that in some points he should have done differently 
 had his life been lived over again. 
 
 I have mentioned these traits in his character 
 because those who only knew him slightly, or who 
 held aloof from him, would probably not recognise 
 them. It cannot be denied that there was something 
 in his manner and mode of speaking which was 
 calculated to make people think him hard and 
 opinionative. He had no patience with sentiment- 
 alism, nor indeed with sentiment if it interfered with 
 what he thought was practically beneficial. This 
 
 little one with whom he came in contact. The surprise and satisfac- 
 tion this occasioned to a little French baby in an out-of-the-way 
 village near Compiegne was pretty to behold, as was the way the 
 mother's face lighted up at this unexpected notice from a stranger.
 
 1894 MISUNDERSTANDINGS 351 
 
 brought him into disgrace with architectural critics 
 when he insisted on the pavement of the retrochoir 
 being relaid and made smooth for the benefit of the 
 congregation who met at 8 A.M. on Thursdays and 
 at 4.45 P.M. for the short addresses on Saints' days. 
 He could not conceive the advantage of retaining 
 the old uneven pavement, and was deaf to all re- 
 monstrances. So also with the Chapter-house. He 
 never could rest till the Diocesan Conference and 
 missionary meetings were transferred from the 
 County Assembly Rooms to what he considered a 
 far more seemly place ; but the levelling of the 
 sloping floor was a grievous offence to many who 
 did not understand his motive in wishing to make 
 use of an ecclesiastical building for ecclesiastical 
 purposes, and the rumour spread abroad that the 
 Dean was spoiling the Cathedral. He would only 
 laugh on being told this, and I don't think he 
 minded it. So long as he was clear on the main 
 point he did not trouble himself with details. 
 
 On another occasion, in a speech on behalf of the 
 School of Art, he used a phrase which gave offence 
 to some, when he said that the "people of Lincoln 
 needed a little civilization." Of course his meaning 
 was clear enough to any one who understood the 
 technical sense of the word, but there were some 
 who insisted that he had insulted Lincoln by calling 
 its people barbarians ! 
 
 Little things like these often conspired to give 
 outsiders an unfavourable impression. His out- 
 spokenness was often unpalatable to those who might
 
 352 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 otherwise have been more drawn to him. He never 
 minced matters. He would tell you plainly that 
 he had no opinion of district visitors, that clergy- 
 men's wives often did a great deal of mischief by 
 meddling, or as he would say, by " poking their 
 noses" into parochial matters where they were not 
 wanted ; that a clergyman was of little use unless 
 he taught religion daily in the parish school ; that 
 large congregations were no proof of a clergyman's 
 efficiency, and such like. Now he would qualify 
 all these assertions if any one entered into conver- 
 sation with him. What he really meant was that 
 district visitors' work is often inefficient when they 
 are not trained, and will not submit to training. 
 What his sentiments were respecting clergymen's 
 wives can be best shown by the following letter : 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. 
 
 LEE HOUSE, BRIGHTON, January 15, 1888. 
 
 ... So you have met your fate at last. I believe that, 
 situated as you are, you will find that your work will be greatly 
 strengthened by having a partner. Not that I believe in what 
 are called 'clergy women,' nor in the claim which people some- 
 times make on clergymen's wives to do parochial work. I do not 
 consider that they have any more call to this than any other 
 ladies. ALL people ought to take their part in good works, and 
 so far, no doubt, the wife of a clergyman ought to set a good 
 example. But I resent the claim. Mrs. Jones, the lawyer's wife, 
 and Mrs. Brown, the squire's wife, etc., etc., are just as much 
 bound in the sight of God to do good to their fellow-creatures as 
 
 Mrs. , the vicar's wife. And the consequence of the claim 
 
 being allowed or recognised is that clergymen's wives are often 
 fussy, self-asserting, and negligent of their own households. The 
 first thing for every married woman to do is to have her house
 
 1894 OF A CLERGYMAN'S WIFE 
 
 353 
 
 well ordered, whether she be the wife of clergyman or layman. 
 Then, after that, let her do what she can for others. I am sure 
 that in this way a clergyman will win more respect, have more 
 Trto-Tts ifiiKri, and so be able to do more for his flock, than if his 
 wife went poking about into the people's houses, and giving 
 tongue at temperance meetings, or G.F.S., or mothers' meetings, 
 and the like. 
 
 Now I did not mean to write all this yarn. It flowed out 
 spontaneously and would not stop. 
 
 I hope that we soon may have the pleasure of seeing you and 
 your future wife. You know how glad we should be to 
 receive you at Lincoln. Only if you come, you must come soon. 
 We are all growing old, and before very long you may be called 
 upon to attend something very different from wedding 
 feasts. . . . 
 
 He himself had taught daily in the Wantage 
 schools for thirty-four years, and he never faltered 
 in his conviction of the importance of this duty. 
 The real proof of a clergyman's efficiency he believed 
 to be shown in the number of the communicants, not 
 in the number of those who simply came to church 
 possibly for the music or for the preaching. But 
 strong statements sometimes scared and repelled 
 people. He was not merciful to self-indulgence in 
 any form, and never liked a clergyman to smoke. 
 In answer to arguments he would simply say, " Mr. 
 Keble never did." I think this reference to one 
 whom he reverenced more than any other man in 
 the Church of England, helps to explain his attitude 
 towards what are usually thought harmless in- 
 dulgences. Every one who reads Dr. Pusey's Life 
 must be struck with the austerity, and indeed asceti- 
 cism, which marked the lives of the Tractarian party. 
 Dean Butler had come in contact with it early, and
 
 354 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 had found in Mr. Keble a guide and pattern he 
 never refused to follow. Hence, he had one good- 
 humoured answer to all who pleaded for a mitigation 
 of the rigid rule he held against a clergyman smoking, 
 or dancing, or shooting, "Mr. Keble never did it." 
 
 But he had also a deeper reason for this strictness. 
 He had a very strong conviction that in these days 
 the Church is on her trial, and that what was 
 tolerated in past days would not be tolerated now. 
 He was fond of saying that formerly people believed 
 in the Church, but that now they believe in the 
 parson meaning that whereas they once had faith 
 in the Church as a system, they now only had in 
 individuals. 
 
 No one who knew his daily life as a Dean could 
 possibly think he held up a standard of life which 
 he did not keep to. His life as a parish priest had 
 been such as probably few would have lived who 
 so . early met with rich preferment, He told me 
 that when he went to Wantage the living was 800 
 a year, and that when he had paid his curates, and 
 subscriptions to schools and charities, only 150 
 remained, so that had he been destitute of private 
 means he could not have carried out his plans. His 
 style of living was of the simplest, and he only had 
 a late dinner on state occasions. Social pleasure he 
 put aside, and seldom dined out in the neighbour- 
 hood. Each day was a day of hard work, spent in 
 the church, in the schools, in the parish. His one 
 relaxation was his annual six weeks' holiday which 
 he always allowed himself, and without which he
 
 1894 DISLIKE OF GRUMBLERS 355 
 
 would have long before broken down. One cannot 
 be surprised that Dean Butler, after such a parochial 
 life, had little sympathy with valetudinarianism, or 
 clerical apathy or idleness. " Of course it is a grind," 
 he would say impatiently, on hearing of some clergy- 
 man complaining of work. And he could not endure 
 discontent. " What is he grumbling about, what 
 does he want?" he would say; and then, on being 
 told that so and so wanted to get away to a better 
 or pleasanter living, he would burst out into strong 
 condemnation. Of course this laid him open to the 
 taunt that as he obtained a good living so early, he 
 could not appreciate the weariness of those who 
 struggle on for long years on exiguous preferment, 
 but this is easily shown to be a cavil. His own 
 life of hard work and rigid self-denial gives the lie 
 to the insinuation that he could not sympathise with 
 those who feel the wear and tear of body and mind 
 in well- worked parishes ; and it must also be re- 
 membered that the greater part of his Wantage life 
 was passed ungraced by any mark of favour from 
 his diocesan. Although Bishop Wilberforce called 
 him a model parish priest, yet he received his 
 solitary distinction of an Honorary Canonry of 
 Christ Church from the hands of Bishop Mackarness. 
 It was reserved for Mr. Gladstone to have the credit 
 of relieving him from the toil of a parish by making 
 him first Canon of Worcester, and then Dean of 
 Lincoln. Hence, he was never weary of telling 
 clergymen that if they only did their duty honestly 
 and single-heartedly, preferment would come in good
 
 356 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 time to them, as it had done to him. He had never 
 sought directly or indirectly for it. He could 
 thoroughly sympathise with a man who did his 
 work simply and uncomplainingly ; he could enter 
 into his difficulties, and would do all he could to 
 help him ; but, as I have said, he could not bear 
 complaints and discontent. 
 
 The life he lived as Dean was a continuation of 
 the parochial life under different conditions, but 
 with the same vigour as of old. He would come 
 back on Easter Eve from Wantage, where through- 
 out the whole week most of his time had been spent 
 in hearing confessions and delivering addresses, 
 looking completely worn out ; and yet the next 
 morning he would be celebrating Holy Com- 
 munion in the retrochoir at seven o'clock, giving 
 a short earnest address and later on preaching at 
 matins in the choir with wonderful freshness and 
 vigour ; and this at an age when most men crave 
 for rest. 
 
 He could not be called a popular preacher in the 
 common sense of the term. Nature had not given 
 him a correct musical ear, and there was a curious 
 misplacement of accent which often marred the 
 delivery. He would begin in rather a low-pitched 
 monotonous voice, perfectly distinct ; but as he 
 warmed to his subject he would gradually raise his 
 voice, and then, owing to the peculiar acoustic pro- 
 perties of the Cathedral, many words would be lost. 
 But none who heard him could fail to be struck with 
 the intense earnestness, the absolute sincerity of
 
 1894 ON GOOD FRIDAY COMMUNION 357 
 
 every word he uttered. His sermons were not, as 
 I have said, popular; they were not flights of 
 oratory ; they were not what is called comfortable ; 
 for he realised so deeply the nature and extent of 
 sin that he could not preach without attacking it in 
 some shape ; but such as they were they made a 
 deeper impression than the more sugary effusions 
 of recognised pulpit orators. The remarks of a 
 Lincoln nonconformist curiously illustrate this. 
 He was asked whom he liked to hear best in the 
 Cathedral, and he replied, "the Dean, because he 
 means business'' I do not know that a better de- 
 scription could be given of Dean Butler's sermons. 
 
 Although he was a very decidedly High Church- 
 man, yet he did not agree with all the practices of 
 the High Church party. He always insisted that 
 there should be a Celebration of Holy Communion 
 on Good Friday. I remember his dear friend Canon 
 Freeling, taking the opposite view in conversation 
 with him, but the Dean was inflexible. His views 
 on this matter are expressed in letters to a former 
 Wantage curate. 
 
 W. J. B. TO REV. E. J. HOLLOWAY. 
 
 WANTAGE VICABAGE, Tuesday in Holy Week, 1880. 
 
 I have not much time, but nevertheless your letter must be 
 answered. Every year I feel more that I have been right in 
 maintaining the Good Friday Communion. The whole thing 
 starts from the ignorance of the ritualists, who imagine because 
 Roman Catholics do not celebrate on that day that there was 
 no Communion. Whereas if they had read and could translate 
 the "Rituale Romanum," they would have found a special ser- 
 vice for the Priest's Communion. Moreover, it is an old English
 
 358 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 custom, and though, one must take care not to let it supersede, as 
 once it did supersede Easter, I do not like to let old traditions 
 drop. We have from twenty to thirty communicants always on 
 that day, and it does not interfere with Easter at all. For my 
 own part I cannot imagine how I could get through the day 
 without Holy Communion. . . . 
 
 THE COLLEGE, WORCESTER, March 27 [1884]. 
 
 ... I send to you a little pamphlet l on a somewhat im- 
 portant subject. The evidence of Tunstal is very striking. For 
 my own part I have never, as you know, abandoned Good 
 Friday Communion. I believe it to be an old English tradition 
 which some of our friends have rashly, in their zeal to imitate 
 Eome, endeavoured to stamp out. I think that you will con- 
 sider the pamphlet worth perusal. 
 
 So, too, he disapproved strongly of the custom 
 recently adopted by many clergy, of refusing to give 
 the chalice into the hands of the communicants. 
 Here he appealed to the rubric, "into their hands," 
 for confirmation of his view. 
 
 Although the world had all his life looked upon 
 him as a ritualist, yet he was not one in the ordinary 
 sense of the term. He understood and valued ritual 
 indeed, but only where he conceived it to be intelli- 
 gible and useful. He once exploded in strong wrath 
 in telling me of a young clergyman who had read 
 the Epistle and Gospel in an inaudible voice, and 
 then defended himself for so doing on the ground 
 that the whole service of the Holy Communion was a 
 mystery ! This sort of thing he could not endure 
 with any patience. 
 
 1 " Celebration of Holy Communion on Good Friday the rule of the 
 Church of England," by Eev. A. Wilson, M.A. (George Bell & Sons, 
 1884.)
 
 1894 VIEWS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS 359 
 
 In talking with me about confession and Sister- 
 hoods he surprised me by what he said. It is always 
 hazardous to trust to one's memory, but my impres- 
 sion is that in speaking of confession he said it 
 was of special benefit to two very opposite classes 
 those who had led very sinful lives, and those whose 
 lives were of singular purity and holiness. The 
 former, he said, found comfort in an authoritative 
 absolution, an assurance of forgiveness for their past 
 sinfulness ; while the latter were often distressed by 
 excessive scruples of conscience, and needed support 
 and encouragement. But he was not for pressing 
 confession on all. What he said about Sisterhoods 
 I have more than once heard him repeat. He was 
 not for the multiplication of such institutions on 
 separate and distinct foundations. He thought that 
 they often ran into debt and got into trouble simply 
 because they were started with insufficient means on 
 an insecure basis. He never allowed his own Sisters 
 to beg. 
 
 I give these scraps of conversation for what they 
 are worth, but they serve to show with what open- 
 ness and frankness he would discuss such matters 
 with a subordinate. He never shirked a question or 
 put it aside, but would always do his best to enlighten 
 one on any point when he was asked. He was very 
 precise in his views as to the conduct and reading 
 of the service. He disliked seeing the Bible left 
 open when once it was done with after the second 
 lesson. He would say, Our Lord closed the book 
 when He had finished reading. He did not like
 
 360 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 words to be clipped in reading the Bible or Prayer 
 Book ; and I remember on one occasion he asked if 
 any one ever read the opening lines of the exhortation, 
 " Dearly belov'd brethren." He held that the rhythm 
 of the sentences required that the " eds " should be 
 sounded. 
 
 His own reading was rapid, but never anything 
 but intensely reverent. So also his whole demeanour 
 in church struck one as being that of a man who 
 realised God's presence. It made him absolutely 
 intolerant of what he called " sloppiness " in doing 
 the service. He did not use many modes of express- 
 ing reverence which have become common in later 
 days. He gave a reverent inclination, not a genu- 
 flection, to the altar. I never saw him use the sign 
 of the cross in church. And yet the Paradisus 
 Animce and the breviary were, with his Bible and 
 Prayer Book, his daily spiritual bread. 
 
 His attitude towards nonconformists has already 
 been touched on by Canon Fowler. I may add 
 to what has been said that there was a cordial 
 friendship between him and one of the leading 
 Lincoln nonconformists, who has earned the grati- 
 tude of Churchmen by his munificent gift to the 
 Cathedral of Queen Eleanor's recumbent effigy. Dean 
 Butler never passed a Christmas Day without a visit 
 to his friend's house. 
 
 A lecture which he gave to an audience largely 
 composed of nonconformists subjected him to some 
 criticism. Of course the matter was exaggerated, 
 and very soon after his death I found an amiable
 
 1894 CHURCH AND DISSENT 361 
 
 clergyman possessed with the idea that he had 
 officiated in a nonconformist chapel. 
 
 The Dean never disguised his opinions on the 
 subject of Dissent, He never would allow the stock 
 argument that as we all are trying to go to the same 
 place it does not matter by which road we go. He 
 had no opinion of the 'exchange of pulpits' device 
 by which some have thought our religious divisions 
 might be healed. He would have nothing to do 
 with platform controversy, whereby, he would say, 
 the parson and minister enact "a religious cock-fight" 
 for the amusement of the public. His own view 
 was that, as Dissent had thriven from the Church's 
 neglect of her duties, the only way to make things 
 better was for clergymen to do their duty thoroughly. 
 
 Nothing depressed him more than to find a clergy- 
 man neglecting his duty. I have known him come 
 back from preaching in remote country villages 
 disheartened and out of spirits at what he had heard 
 of parishes where the clergyman never went near 
 the schools. " How can he expect the people to be 
 other than Dissenters if he does not get hold of the 
 young generation and teach them true Church 
 principles," he would say ; and at the suggestion 
 that teaching daily in the school was irksome, "Of 
 course it is a grind. What a grind it was at 
 Wantage getting the children to say their prayers." 
 
 In politics he took a line of his own. His feelings 
 and sympathies were, in his later years conservative; 
 but his pet formula, which he was fond of quoting, 
 gives the key to his political convictions: "He loveth
 
 362 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 our nation, and hath built us a synagogue." So long 
 as a man was patriotic, and a Churchman, he did not 
 ask for more. 
 
 His own personal friendships were not affected 
 by political differences. Lord Swansea had been a 
 lifelong friend, and he was on terms of affectionate 
 intimacy with his brother-in-law, K. D. Hodgson, 
 who represented Bristol in the Liberal interest. 
 
 On coming into Lincolnshire he had great pleasure 
 in renewing acquaintance with men whom he had 
 been with at Westminster and Cambridge Canon 
 Welby, Mr. Banks Stanhope, and others. He had 
 an extraordinary memory for faces known to him 
 in early days, and delighted in discussing old times 
 with former school and college friends. 
 
 Otherwise, it must be confessed, he never quite 
 cordially ' took to ' Lincolnshire. Perhaps few 
 people brought up in the south and coming here 
 late in life, ever do. 
 
 He was painfully struck with what seemed to him 
 the want of organisation in the Diocese. Living so 
 long as he had done in a very perfectly organised 
 Diocese like that of Oxford, he could not at first 
 understand why Lincoln should be so different. In 
 vain one used to urge various pleas that the 
 awkward situation of Lincoln itself, on one side of the 
 county, and not well served by trains, was an 
 obstacle ; or that Lincoln never had been held in 
 the same esteem in Lincolnshire as York is in York- 
 shire. It was all in vain. The contrasts which he 
 not infrequently drew may have served to repel some
 
 1894 SOME LAST LETTERS 363 
 
 from becoming intimate with him ; but as a rule 
 he made friends wherever he went. It was difficult, 
 indeed, to resist such thorough sincerity of kindness, 
 such genuine truthfulness as he evinced in his inter- 
 course with clergy and laity. Some held aloof, but 
 though he was quite aware of their sentiments, he 
 never gave vent to any bitterness in what he said 
 of them. On the contrary, in one case he took 
 special pains to gratify what he knew were the 
 wishes of a clergyman, although he was perfectly 
 aware of the latter's feeling towards him. It was 
 all of a piece with the generosity of his nature to try 
 to satisfy another man's desires without getting any 
 thanks for doing so. 
 
 I close these recollections with two letters ; one 
 written from Scotland. The first words make one 
 feel ashamed that one should have added to his 
 labours by asking him for help during one's holiday ; 
 but he was always only too willing to give it. 
 
 BUCCLEUGH VILLA, FORT WILLIAM, August 14, 1893. 
 
 / can manage September 24. We are not at all badly situated 
 here, with a loch and mountains in front, and Ben Nevis behind 
 us. House clean and sweet. We are waited upon by two Miss 
 Macdonalds, daughters of a vigorous Highlander who has all the 
 coaching and other traffic business in his hands a stout Episco- 
 palian and Conservative. He comes from Glencoe, whither, 
 about twenty miles off, he is to drive us to-day. We went to the 
 church here built mainly by the exertions of Mr. Davey, friend 
 of Mr. Hutton Riddell a really satisfactory building. . . . We 
 met many friends in Edinburgh ; visited the Cathedral, which is 
 really a fine building and has good services. The Dean, Mont- 
 gomery, is a fine old Scotchman. ... I am poking a little at 
 Gaelic. It is very hard and barbaric.
 
 364 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 The other letter is the last I ever received from him : 
 
 THE DEANERY, LINCOLN, September 25, 1893. 
 
 Before I get to write my paper for the Church Congress, I will 
 write you a line respecting yesterday's services at Burton. The 
 church was full both times, and the singing and general tone all 
 that one can desire. How sad it is that the same cannot be 
 everywhere ! It might were it not for that horrid Methodism 
 and other forms of Dissent ; yet even they would be in a great 
 degree neutralised if the clergy did their work faithfully and 
 kindly. . . . Mrs. Butler is still at Wantage. She is to join 
 me at Dogmersfield in October, I believe. We stay with the 
 Mildmays, and I am to preach on the fiftieth anniversary of the 
 rebuilding of the church. My first curacy was there, and a great 
 blessing it has been to me. The Dysons were no ordinary 
 people. They were very clever and affectionate, and took a high 
 view of clerical duty. He had been Professor of Anglo-Saxon, 
 and belonged to that famous old C.C.C. lot, which included 
 Arnold, and Mr. Keble, and Cornish of Kenwyn, and various 
 other noble souls. Make the best of your holiday, and return 
 ruddy, round, and reasonable. 
 
 In July, 1893, the Dean and Mrs. Butler cele- 
 brated their ' golden wedding.' It was marked by 
 various gifts to the Cathedral, notably a beautiful 
 Bible for the choir lectern from their children and 
 grandchildren, and a gold chalice set with sapphires 
 for use at the altar in the Lady Chapel, from many 
 friends connected with Wantage. No one then had 
 the slightest idea how near the clouds of sorrow were. 
 The Dean's health was good, and although Mrs. Butler 
 was no longer equal to taking foreign tours, yet there 
 was no cause for uneasiness about her. The sonnet 
 written in acknowledgement of the tokens of love and 
 friendship on the occasion of the ' golden wedding ' 
 shows however that the Dean had memento mori
 
 I8 94 THE GOLDEN WEDDING 365 
 
 ever before his eyes. But this was no recent thought 
 to him. One of his first acts on coming to Lincoln 
 was to get leave from the Home Secretary for the 
 interment of members of the Chapter and their 
 families in the Cloister Garth, and he selected his 
 own place of burial and frequently pointed it out to 
 friends as he was passing through the Cloister. 
 
 A crumbling wall to fall at lightest breath, 
 A bark hull-covered as the waters rose, 
 A city round whose wall the foemen close, 
 
 An aged man who daily looks on death 
 
 Such, dearest friends, am I yet this remains: 
 
 A heart which beats in unison with love, 
 A heart which love rejoices like the rains 
 
 Which fall on thirsty soil and quickly prove 
 That life remains within. Thus, then, 'tis mine 
 To feel new life in all the love from all 
 
 Poured forth on me and her, for lustres ten 
 Most wise and helpful mate, true oil and wine 
 To vexed and troubled spirit, whom to call 
 Wife, and my own, exalts me among men. 
 With grateful heart, 
 
 WILLIAM BUTLER. 
 
 A letter written at the same time breathes the 
 same spirit : 
 
 W. J. B. TO 
 
 THE DEANERY, LINCOLN, July 31, 1893. 
 
 Many thanks to you and to your father also for ' minding ' 
 our fiftieth wedding day. It is very wonderful that we should 
 both be alive and reasonably well, fairly able-bodied and 
 not idiotic. Of course this cannot last for ever, nor much 
 longer. But whenever the change comes my only feeling will be 
 of deepest thankfulness to Him Who has poured so many bless- 
 ings on my life. Few have had a happier life than I. I trust 
 that the poor return that I have made may be forgiven. You
 
 366 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 and others do not know how much I have to lament yet so 
 it is and the thought of so many good things given makes this 
 all the more keenly felt. . . . 
 
 In October the blow came. He was to preach in 
 a church at Maidenhead, and shortly before going 
 up into the pulpit a telegram was put into his hands 
 which told him that Mrs. Butler, whom he had left 
 perfectly well at Lincoln, was stricken with paralysis. 
 The shock must have been terrible, but with his 
 strong sense of duty he would not shirk the task 
 he had to do. He preached, although, as he after- 
 wards said, he did not know how he did it ; and 
 after making some necessary arrangements at Want- 
 age, he hurried back to Lincoln. 
 
 He found Mrs. Butler greatly recovered, for the 
 seizure was not a severe one, but it was an unmis- 
 takeable warning, and he seemed to realise for the 
 first time how slender was the thread of life that 
 bound them together. 
 
 No one who knew Dean Butler, and saw him in 
 his family circle, could fail to see that, great as was 
 his love for his children, his affections were centred 
 in his wife. She was everything to him. I shall 
 never forget the change I noticed in him when I 
 went into his study the morning after bis return. 
 All the brightness had gone out of his face ; he spoke 
 in a low subdued voice, and looked like one who 
 had undergone a terrible shock. And yet the days 
 that followed were in some respects unusually happy 
 ones. He at once cancelled all his immediate en- 
 gagements, and devoted himself to the care of Mrs.
 
 1 894 HALCYON DAYS 367 
 
 Butler. Sitting beside her bed and reading to her the 
 first volume of Dr. Pusey's Life so full of interest to 
 them both it was an interval of calm peaceful hap- 
 piness in a life which had been so full of hard work, 
 and so much interrupted by absences from home. 
 
 Few could know how entirely in sympathy with 
 her husband's work Mrs. Butler had been throughout 
 her married life. She had resolved at the outset 
 never to be a hindrance to him in his clerical duties, 
 and so through the years of toil at Wantage she had 
 been content to lead a self-denying life ; to forego 
 many of the pleasant refreshments which sometimes 
 sweeten the life of a hard-working clergyman's wife ; 
 to see but little of him during the day when he was 
 busy in the schools and in the parish, or in the 
 evening when he would be holding classes. And 
 in this retired life not many knew what reason her 
 husband had to be proud of the intellectual powers 
 which she never sought to display. She had an 
 unusually accurate and retentive memory, and had 
 received a thoroughly good education. Before her 
 marriage she and a sister had made various transla- 
 tions from Fouque, among which their Sintram was 
 praised by J. H. Newman. Mrs. Butler had, more- 
 over, a singularly clear head for business, and had 
 kept not only all the domestic but also the paro- 
 chial accounts, setting her husband absolutely free 
 from all financial cares, so that he used humorously 
 to relate how that, since his marriage, he had only 
 once drawn a cheque, which was returned with the 
 comment " Signature not known."
 
 368 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 No wonder then that on the rare occasions when 
 he allowed himself to contemplate the possibility of 
 losing his wife, he used to speak of his future life 
 as almost too wretched to be borne. " I don't know 
 what I should do without Mrs. Butler," he said to 
 me not many days before his death. 
 
 He was mercifully spared the trial. Mrs. Butler 
 had recovered from the immediate effects of the 
 seizure, but she came downstairs an invalid, and 
 obliged to lead an invalid's life. The Dean had 
 already begun to take up the threads of his inter- 
 rupted work, and though his heart was heavy he 
 forced himself to go about with an outwardly cheer- 
 ful face. 
 
 But he felt that death was drawing very near. 
 On a Sunday in December " he came out of the 
 Cathedral in his surplice," writes a near relative, 
 " and stood between the greenhouses looking up at 
 the central tower. ' What a grand place it is ! 
 Well, I shall soon be. lying beneath it.' Then with 
 a quick change of manner, and looking down at me 
 with a half smile, ' And then everybody will say, 
 He wasn't such a bad chap after all.' ' 
 
 He was greatly grieved at the death of Mr. 
 Edward Stanhope, 1 for whom he had a very warm 
 regard. He looked upon him quite as a realisation 
 of his conception of what a good man should be a 
 Churchman and a patriot. When then he was asked 
 by Mrs. Stanhope to preach on the first Sunday after 
 
 1 Ed ward Stanhope, Secretary for War, M.P. for Lincolnshire, 
 died Dec. 1893.
 
 * 
 
 I8 94 THE LAST ADDRESS $69 
 
 her husband's death, he willingly consented, though 
 he was not feeling well. On Saturday, December 
 30th, he came into the vestry of the Cathedral to 
 tell me he was going to Revesby that afternoon, 
 and would not be back till Monday morning, January 
 1st, and spoke to me about the seven o'clock Cele- 
 bration of Holy Communion, which he would not 
 be able to take himself as usual. I saw him next 
 on Monday afternoon when he came to Evensong, 
 and read as usual the second lesson, but with evident 
 signs of illness. After Evensong, as it was the Feast 
 of the Circumcision, he gave a short address in the 
 retrochoir on "a new heaven and a new earth," with 
 what those who heard it described as something 
 
 ' unearthly' in voice and manner. His last words 
 
 the last he was to speak in the Cathedral were, "I 
 will go forth in the name of the Lord God, and make 
 mention of His righteousness only." That evening 
 he had the Cathedral choristers to supper at the 
 Deanery, and seemed outwardly bright and cheerful, 
 but he confessed that he felt exceedingly ill and 
 could not imagine what was the matter with him. 
 I said he ought to see a doctor, but he only smiled, 
 and said he should soon be all right again. He took 
 leave of me at the front door, and said something 
 about Mrs. Butler's health which showed how it 
 weighed upon his mind. 
 
 The next day he did not leave his room. No one 
 had any feeling of serious uneasiness, and no unfav- 
 ourable symptoms showed themselves, though his 
 condition remained unchanged till Friday, January 
 
 2 A
 
 370 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 5th, when he caught a chill, and by the following 
 morning influenza, which was already in the house, 
 had declared itself. Still, even though we heard 
 that pneumonia had set in, we did not realise the 
 danger. He had always seemed so strong and made 
 so liorht of illness that it was hard to believe he could 
 
 o 
 
 succumb to any ordinary attack. But the pneumonia 
 had affected both lungs, and the doctor really had 
 but little hope. 
 
 Up to this point he had still been working in his 
 sick-room, preparing his Revesby sermon for publi- 
 cation, and answering his Christmas letters. The 
 following is one of the last he wrote : 
 
 W. J. B. TO 
 
 DEANERY, LINCOLN, Jan. 5, 1894. 
 
 Thank you for your kind Christmas greeting, which alas ! 
 I have been utterly unable to acknowledge till now, so vast 
 a heap of business of all kinds which had to be got through 
 was lying on my shoulders. Now I am regularly laid by, with 
 the severest throat and chest attack that I have ever had. 
 I can hardly speak for five minutes without coughing myself 
 to pieces. I am in my bedroom, and there likely to bide, 
 especially if this bitter weather holds on. Fortunately all that 
 I had to do except letters which I can manage was done 
 before / was done for. 
 
 I hope that all went well with you and on Christmas 
 
 day, and that you have taught the folk that Christmas means 
 more than roast beef and pudding. How shocking it is to see 
 how the world has snatched from the Church even its holiest 
 days! 
 
 Mrs. Butler (D.G.) continues to mend. You would not, I 
 am sure, perceive that she had ever been ill. She is in very 
 
 good force and spirits. and , poor dears, have enough 
 
 to think about, but they seem to stand it pretty well. . . .
 
 1894 FINIS CORONAT OPUS 371 
 
 He got worse. On Tuesday, the 9th, I was sent 
 for to administer the Holy Communion to him and Mrs. 
 Butler. He had more than once told me he expected 
 me to come to him if he died at Lincoln, because, as 
 he said, " You know my ways." He was in a small 
 bedroom adjoining Mrs. Butler's, and I only saw him 
 when I went in to give him the Holy Communion. 
 Even then he seemed so strong, took the chalice 
 in so firm a grasp, that I never imagined the end 
 was so near. The next day a doctor from Leeds 
 came to consult with the Lincoln medical man. We 
 heard that if he could get over Sunday he might 
 possibly pull through. In the course of the week 
 the Bishop said to him, "It is worth while to be 
 ill for Dr. Pusey," referring to a Review of Dr. 
 Pusey's Life on which he had been working, though 
 feeling the strain in the midst of all his other work ; 
 he responded with a bright look. 
 
 Through Saturday night I sat up at the Deanery 
 in case he should pass away suddenly. All hope 
 was then over. Early on Sunday morning the 
 doctor told him of his hopeless state. He hardly 
 at first seemed to comprehend it, for his strength 
 was still very great. The fever had gone, but the 
 lungs were both clogged, and the heart was 
 failing. 
 
 I went to him soon after eight, and read a psalm 
 and some prayers from the " Visitation of the Sick." 
 At nine I went at his desire to the palace, to tell 
 the Bishop he was dying and to ask him to come. 
 
 The Bishop came and read the commendatory
 
 372 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 prayer, and gave him his blessing. His utterance 
 was much impeded, and it was difficult to make 
 out clearly what he said, but the few words that 
 fell from him were full of gratitude and affection 
 and calm trust. 
 
 I had to go to at ten o'clock for the service, 
 
 and I took leave of him, not expecting to find -him 
 alive when I returned at one. But he lingered on 
 in full consciousness, and said farewell to his wife, 
 who was brought from her sick-bed to see him 
 once more. He gave directions that any flowers 
 which might be sent after his death should be 
 given to the patients at the County Hospital. 
 His spirit passed away just as the bells ceased to 
 ring for the four o'clock service. 
 
 The next Sunday, January 21st, Mrs. Butler 
 followed him. They lie in the Cloister Garth, in 
 the north-east corner, a spot he had marked out 
 for himself some time before. After his wife's 
 funeral a short bright peal of bells, in accordance 
 with the Canon, was rung ; and some people, who 
 were more accustomed to funeral peals, and did 
 not know the reason, were perplexed. A maid- 
 servant who had been a member of his communicants' 
 class told her mistress that she wondered at first, 
 but now was sure they did it for joy, because the 
 Dean and Mrs. Butler were once more together. 
 
 Among the many letters which poured in after 
 William Butler's death, one of the most touching 
 was from the Cure of St. Ouen, whose visit to Lincoln
 
 i8 9 4 LETTER FROM L'ABBE* PANEL 373 
 
 in the previous year has been mentioned. He was 
 the last of a series of foreign priests with whom a 
 friendship had been established, on terms of mutual 
 respect, Christian charity, and no compromise. 
 
 ST. OPEN DE RODEN, LE 28 Janvier, 1894. 
 
 TRES-HONORE MONSIEUR, C'est avec des larmes dans les 
 yeux, que j'ai lu la lettre que vous avez eu la tres-grande 
 bonte de m'ecrire. . . . Pauvre Monsieur le Doyen! 
 
 Comme je le ve"nerais, comme je 1'aimais et comme je le 
 regrette ! Et Madame votre si respectable mere, quel delicieux 
 souvenir j'avais emporte d'elle ! 
 
 Je crois vraiment que la nouvelle d'un de'ces dans ma famille 
 ne m'aurait pas plus vivement impressionne que celle de la 
 perte si inopinee, si inattendue de deux personnes amies pour 
 lesquelles j'avais un veritable culte de respectueuse affection. 
 Comme vous le dites si bien et d'une maniere si touchante, ils 
 sont partis tous deux dans la foi d'une Eglise qui repose sur 
 la meme fondation que la notre. 
 
 Oh certes, je n'ai pas 1'ombre d'une doute qu'ils n'aient re9u 
 tous deux dans le ciel la recompense de leur foi et de leurs 
 admirables vertus. 
 
 Vous permettrez pourtant a ma foi catholique romaine, cette 
 douce consolation de prier pour le repos complet de 1'ame de nos 
 regrettes defunts, en ofFrant a leur intention le Saint Sacrifice 
 de la Messe. Pour que vous puissiez vous unir de loin & ma 
 priere, je compte dire cette Messe a St. Ouen Dimanche prochain 
 & neuf heures en presence du Tres-Saint Sacrement expose" 
 solennellement. . . . 
 
 Agreez, tres-honore^ monsieur, 1'hommage de mes condolences 
 les plus sympathiques et les plus respectueuses en N.-S. J.-C. 
 
 The late Kev. T. B. PoUock of St. Alban's, 
 Birmingham, noted down some recollections of 
 
 O ' 
 
 a long friendship before he too passed to his 
 reward :
 
 374 THE LAST YEARS 1885- 
 
 . . . What St. Alban's owes to him we can never fully 
 tell. When we were in lowest depths, and every man's hand 
 and voice were against us, and we had hard work to keep any 
 faith in the future of what we were trying to do, he came, and 
 was the means of turning the whole course of things. He 
 had preached at Holy Trinity for E. C. U. On the morning 
 after, he came to the early Celebration at St. Alban's, and break- 
 fasted with us. This was about twenty-seven years ago. He 
 went into the whole history of our troubles with the kindest 
 interest, and braced us at once by the contagion of his strong 
 spirit. He spoke to Lord Beauchamp, who visited St. Alban's, 
 and offered to be one of the trustees, and was till the day of his 
 death an active friend of the work, with his influence and his 
 offerings. 
 
 We were in heavy debt, and some of our lay people urged the 
 sale of St. Patrick's mission-room and schools. Your father was 
 the means of sending us an anonymous offering of 1500, which 
 saved what now promises to be a work almost as large as that of 
 St. Alban's. 
 
 We knew well how much he was in demand, and felt diffident 
 about asking him to come to us as often as he did ; but he 
 always came when he could, and with a readiness that made his 
 help more valued. Some one wrote, I think in the Guardian, 
 that he was a man " more to be feared than loved." This was to 
 us most strange. I never met one in his position with whom 
 one was able to be more absolutely at one's ease, sure of his 
 warm kindness of heart. He never ' pawed ' or fondled people, 
 either with words or hands, as the manner of some is. He had 
 stronger and more manly ways of showing affection and winning 
 it. A born ruler of men, no one ever seemed to me more to 
 recognise the ' authority ' under which he was. He had no 
 patience with wilfulness and private fancies, and used constantly 
 to urge the carrying out in its thoroughness of the system of 
 the Church which entrusted us with a commission. Some years 
 ago he expressed great concern at the new notions about fasting, 
 which he said were becoming common. He said he Avould like 
 greatly to see Dr. Pusey, who first taught him, and ask what 
 his feeling was about the change. Fasting used to be looked 
 upon as a discipline and self-denial, but now, even in religious 
 houses, it was becoming merely a matter of formal obedience,
 
 1894 THE LINCOLN MEMORIAL 375 
 
 and the most dainty and luxurious food was provided, all being 
 thought right, if only meat was avoided. When the Dean 
 was with us during the week of the Congress in Birmingham, he 
 was as cheery as a boy ; but he often said things that plainly 
 showed a feeling that his life was not to be long. Talking 
 one day he said, " I only care now for friends and books. Any- 
 thing else give it to Chimham." And twice before, when he 
 was leaving us he said, " I always think now when my visit 
 to you comes to an end, that it is my last." . . . Many feel 
 with me that his friendship was indeed a blessing for which to 
 thank God. There are few friends to be found so true and 
 so stimulating, so kind and so strong. May God raise up for 
 this Church in England men such as he was. ... He 
 was with us about the time that he left Wantage for Worcester. 
 I remember his saying that people told him that the work at 
 Wantage would go to pieces without him, and that he had 
 replied, " Then the sooner the better, for if so, it is Butler and 
 not Christ." At his next visit he told us, with delight in his 
 face and voice, that at the last Christmas there had been more 
 communicants than there ever were in his time. . . . But 
 for the help which he obtained for us to save St. Patrick's, our 
 school and other organisations would be now, as far as we can 
 judge, about half what they are. We indeed owe it to him that 
 we are about to build another church nearly as large as St. 
 Alban's, with its complete organisation. 
 
 The great point which he was never tired of urging was the 
 duty of working the Church system as laid down in the Book of 
 Common Prayer. This he was convinced would, if thoroughly 
 used, meet all needs in a better and more lasting way than 
 the new and exciting methods that are being constantly 
 invented. 
 
 It was thought fitting that the Cathedral to which 
 his last years had been devoted should contain a 
 memorial of him ; and on St. Mark's day, April 25, 
 1896, the Bishop of Ely, in the presence of many 
 friends, unveiled the alabaster effigy on an altar 
 tomb which had been erected in his memory. The
 
 376 THE LAST YEARS 1896 
 
 inscription summarises the character which it has 
 been the aim of this book to portray. 
 
 t 
 
 In pace Dei requiescat 
 
 Pastor animarum 
 
 Sagax simplex strenuus 
 
 Willelmus Johannes Butler S.T.P. 
 
 Ecclesiae huiusce Cathedralis decanus 
 
 Qui natum se atque renatum 
 Non sibi sed Christo ovibusque Christi ratus 
 
 Austera quadam caritate 
 Labore indefesso assidua prece 
 
 Id egit 
 
 Domi foris validus segrotans 
 
 Ut amorem Dei erga peccatores testatus 
 
 A peccatis reduces in amore Dei confirmaret.
 
 APPENDIX I. 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 'SPIRITUAL' LETTERS. 
 
 I SUPPOSE that different people find comfort and help in 
 different manners. To me nothing is more stirring than 
 the lives of men who have nobly served our Lord e.g. Bishop 
 Gray, or Patteson, or St. Charles Borromeo, or Gratry (La 
 Jeunesse du Pere G.), or Montalembert. They help one, I 
 think, to long and to try. To St. Paul the thought of our 
 Lord "Who loved me, and gave Himself" had an inspiring force. 
 
 Wandering thoughts are a trial to every one. The great 
 test of spiritual progress is not, I think, freedom from them, 
 but power to resist temptation. If you find that you have 
 more power over your tongue more ability to restrain a 
 satirical remark or at least more consciousness of its evil, 
 and regret for it after giving way ; or again, if you find 
 yourself more ready to make sacrifices for others' sake, in one 
 word, more unselfish, or, if you are more careful to give the 
 right time to prayer, whether or not the thoughts may be 
 distracted. All these and such as these are tests. Feelings 
 are worth almost nothing. Do you know Newman's sermon 
 "On the Use of Excited Feelings"? It is well worth reading. 
 I think that it is in Vol. IV. The great help to spiritual pro- 
 gress is the gaining a deep sense of God's love, referring all 
 to Him, resting on His love. I believe that people become 
 good much more by looking out of, than into, themselves. 
 "Beholding as in a glass the glory of God, we are changed 
 into the same image," etc. We cannot become good by self- 
 analysis. That will indeed show us our own sinfulness, but
 
 378 APPENDIX I 
 
 it is the bringing the soul under the light of God's counten- 
 ance which enables it to slough off evil, and to develop good, 
 just as the sun, not the gardener's broom, frees the soil from 
 the damp of dew. 
 
 Every one makes progress who means to do so. This is a 
 great law. The stone is always rolled away at the proper 
 time. But then we must climb the hill. That means effort. 
 
 After all, what is food but medicine, and I cannot see why 
 it is more sinful to eat a slice of mutton than to take a dose 
 of quinine or of cod-liver oil. Of course I quite accept that 
 some sort of fasting is needful. We are bound to obey the 
 Church. We are wise to subdue our flesh, and to strengthen 
 the will by such mortifications as we can manage without 
 injury to health. But there I make my stand. I will never 
 give in to the fish and pudding theory versus meat. It seems 
 to me both superstitious and dangerous. But there is much 
 to be said on this subject, partly limiting, partly explanatory. 
 
 Do not fret about ' deep feelings.' The great thing is simply 
 to be desirous to do God's will. Feelings are not under our 
 control, at least they are so only in a limited degree. They 
 are more physical than spiritual, though people lay so much 
 stress on them and imagine because they have susceptible 
 nerves, they are in the road to heaven. " In quietness and 
 confidence shall be your strength." Hurrell Froude somewhere 
 says that he wishes to be a 'hum-drum.' There is a great 
 deal in that. He means that he admires those who just go 
 on from day to day doing their natural work, and not fidget- 
 ing or fussing, simply trusting to God as a merciful and loving 
 Father, Who, if He meant to slay us, would not accept " a 
 burnt-offering at our hands." 
 
 Lent is an excellent time for a fresh start, and such starts 
 and beginnings do really make up our poor earthly life, and 
 we must be satisfied. " There is no condemnation for those 
 which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but 
 after the Spirit." Read all that chapter, Romans viii., very 
 carefully. It is a wonderful exposition of the Christian's real 
 condition. To walk after the Spirit does not imply perfectness
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 'SPIRITUAL' LETTERS 379 
 
 of life, but the aiming after it the following such light as 
 we possess with such strength as we possess. I believe greatly 
 in all that unites the soul in love to God the use of psalms, 
 prayer, meditation, short ejaculations and aspirations, the Holy 
 Eucharist. These, together with humble confession of sins, 
 seem to me such as cannot fail to bring the soul into the 
 divine image. This is why it is very important to make our 
 prayers a reality. 
 
 God does not mean that His children's lives should be 
 one long fret and vexation, though He does mean them to be 
 a battle. Yes, a battle, but with the certainty of victory, if 
 only the struggle is maintained. The victory is of Him and 
 His grace, but our will and effort must co-operate. Or perhaps 
 one should rather reverse the sentence, and say that His grace 
 co-operates with our effort. When our Lord speaks of peace, 
 He means what we call happiness. 
 
 Touching Holy Communion, do you know Sadler's little 
 book ? It seems to me to be remarkably good and sens- 
 ible, like all that he writes. I always think that the best 
 and safest plan is to make preparation part of daily prayers, 
 adding, it may be, some special devotion on the days when one 
 communicates. This seems to keep the soul in a quiet and 
 orderly condition, ready for whatever comes. In former days, 
 when Celebrations were few and far between, the week's pre- 
 paration or the month's preparation was greatly needed, but with 
 our happily frequent Communions, it is best I think to live 
 always in a state of preparation. And what is better than this 
 for us who know not when the Master cometh? To be pre- 
 pared for Holy Communion is to be prepared for seeing Him 
 as He is. 
 
 The truth is that what is called the world, is, like the 
 kingdom of heaven, something within ourselves. If our hearts 
 are worldly, we might be worldly in a Trappist monastery. 
 If our hearts are not worldly, then, like Mrs. Godolphin, we may 
 be saints in the midst of a profligate court like that of Charles 
 II. Of course there is a limit to lawfulness in amusements, 
 etc. They may be such as injure the soul, or they may be 
 innocent, yet too much sought after and indulged in. In which 
 case we ought to draw in the reins pretty tightly.
 
 38o APPENDIX I 
 
 There is no patent road to prayer. Nothing but effort 
 will attain it, and self-humiliation for failure. Praying is like 
 springing from the ground. Do what we will, except in some 
 very special cases, the earth draws us downwards. And there- 
 fore we can only pray as it were by leaps. But then we 
 know that God accepts the will for the deed ; and growth 
 is 'how a man knoweth not.' It is certainly not measured 
 by feeling, but by the power of resisting temptation. 
 
 I do not know what to say about ' Guardian Angel.' I do 
 not use such devotions myself, nor do I think that any good 
 comes from it; we know so little. Why not cling to our 
 blessed Lord ? Pray Him to give His angels charge. Surely 
 that will do. 
 
 There are no patent recipes for getting rid of one's faults. 
 French polish looks well, but does not last. Elbow work 
 does. So it is with our characters. Dodges and artifices, like 
 teetotalism, do not hold on. There is nothing for it but 
 watchfulness, effort, and self-humiliation, continually carried 
 on through life. 
 
 I do not think that any one can be better off than where 
 God places her. He can save by few as well as by many, 
 and there is great danger in these days lest people should get 
 the habit of resting on means of grace, and imagining that if 
 without their own fault they are deprived of them, they cannot 
 get on. God gives His grace to all who are obedient. And 
 obedience consists in seeking means of grace when they can be 
 had, and putting up with the privation of them when it is God's 
 will that this should be the case. The meat with which the 
 angel fed Elijah lasted for forty days. I am not at all sure that 
 many of those who are connected with confraternities, etc., are 
 the better for it. There are no better Christians than the old- 
 fashioned folk who made it a point to read every day the 
 Psalms and Lessons. 
 
 I suppose that this may be rightly said : that no one who 
 tries to be good, or who mourns and humbles herself for sin, 
 can possibly be cast away. God does not look for victory in
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 'SPIRITUAL' LETTERS 381 
 
 us, but for effort. When there is effort His Holy Spirit is 
 working with us, and none can pluck us out of His hands. 
 The best course in most cases is simply to go on working, 
 praying, striving, and not speculating; trusting simply and 
 implicitly to His mercy and love, by means of which all must 
 in the end come right. I own that I dread and dislike 
 extremely all theories of purgatory and the like. Be prac- 
 tical and let imagination alone. The only use of purgatory 
 in the Roman Catholic teaching has been (1) to fill the coffers 
 of Leo X.; (2) to bring on the Reformation ; neither of which is 
 satisfactory. 
 
 Do not worry yourself about Church matters. "Pray for 
 the peace of Jerusalem," and let all the rest alone. All is 
 sure to go well. " The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage, 
 but," etc. / think that Mr. Keble's sermons, all and each, are 
 as precious as gold filings. 
 
 I never trouble myself about speculative questions. The 
 only thing that I care for is to try to be good as far as I 
 may myself, and to help others to be the same. Given that 
 and all will be well. You know "Justum et tenacem propositi 
 virum," etc., or if you do not, get to translate it to you. 
 
 Who can define or limit the power of the grace of God 
 in any soul ? This is quite certain, that " to them that knock 
 it shall be opened," but it does not follow that they may 
 not have to knock for a long while, nor even that they will 
 attain in this present life. Our work is simply to continue 
 the struggle, to aim at the highest standard which God 
 presents to our minds, and to leave it to Him to open the way. 
 I think that it is quite wrong not to believe Holy Scripture, 
 or to try to tone it down to suit man's feelings and wishes ; and 
 when our Lord says, "These shall go away into everlasting 
 punishment, but the righteous into life eternal," the word for 
 everlasting and eternal being exactly the same in the Greek 
 how can I believe anything but that one is correlated with the 
 other, the punishment of the wicked with the happiness of the 
 good ? Such speculations can do no good, and may do an infinity of 
 harm. Let all alone, and look to God to make all things right.
 
 382 APPENDIX I 
 
 The prayer for invocation of the Holy Spirit is not essential 
 to consecration. What is essential is to use the words and do 
 the acts with which our Lord instituted it. This is admitted 
 on all sides. No doubt such invocation is reverent and right, 
 and it is through the influence of the Holy Spirit that our 
 Lord's Body is with the bread and wine, even as the divine 
 nature was united with the manhood in the Incarnation. This is 
 the opinion of theologians, and it ought to be enough for us. 
 Touching the translation of the Bible. Wait a little. Let us 
 see what is to come. Of course it cannot be accepted without 
 the consent of Convocation, and that consent is not very likely 
 to be given. In all these matters the great thing is not to be 
 in a hurry to judge or to form conclusions. 
 
 I do not think it necessary to explain the "sun standing 
 still." Perhaps it simply means that there was light even 
 when the sun went down, that the result was as if it stood 
 still. The Bible does not profess to give lessons in astronomy. 
 So also the shadow on the dial might have receded, without 
 altering the actual movement of the earth. These difficulties 
 are the merest nothings when you come to tackle them. They 
 remind me of a donkey who when he read that God created 
 great whales (Gen. i. 21), suggested that therefore He did not 
 create the little ones. I do not say that you are a donkey, 
 but that he was. 
 
 I think that it is quite lawful to attend R.C. churches abroad. 
 That is the Church of the country. We have never excom- 
 municated Rome, and it is quite open to them to communicate 
 with us, if the Pope allowed it. It is true that they will not 
 receive us to Communion. But what they will permit us to 
 advantage ourselves by, i.e. presence at Mass, etc., we are quite 
 justified in accepting, so far as I can see. 
 
 Why do you ask such questions as Solomon could scarcely 
 have answered to the Queen of Sheba 1 It is far better to leave 
 all that sort of thing in God's hand. He knows best, and it is 
 quite certain that He will call none away till it is best that they 
 should be called away. How can we tell what refining of the soul 
 goes on in paradise, or even in eternity ? No one, as I believe, can
 
 EXTRACTS FROM 'SPIRITUAL' LETTERS 383 
 
 be lost who acts according to his conscience, or when he fails to 
 do so, laments and repents. Neither will any be lost who 
 commit sin without knowing what sin is. But, as I said, it is 
 useless to attempt to dive into mysteries. God gives us all the 
 knowledge that is needful for our own edification. That is 
 enough for us. 
 
 Your paper is very good as far as it goes, but it is in- 
 complete. You omit the most important part of our Lord's 
 redeeming work. He came to sanctify as well as to justify, 
 and this should never be omitted. The world likes to be told 
 that Christ came to die for sinners, and that to believe is to 
 be saved. But they do not like the idea of being made good, 
 because this costs them trouble. Any statement of our Lord's 
 work therefore which omits this plays into the world's hands. 
 And again, what is the meaning of 'Justification'? How was it 
 brought about 1 ? Not by suffering, but by obedience, Rom. v. 19. 
 His obedience involved suffering, but it makes all the difference 
 to our idea of God, whether you state that He must have 
 obedience, or that He required a sort of vengeance on sinners 
 in Christ's sufferings. 
 
 After much anxious consideration and consultation I came to 
 the conclusion that it is absolutely impossible, without breaking 
 our Lord's distinct ordinance, for certain people not to take some 
 slight amount of food before communicating. If you care to see 
 a letter from Dr. Pusey on the subject, whose opinion I esteem 
 
 more than Mr. , good and learned though he is, ask - 
 
 to send it to you. We must not attempt, as things are with us, 
 to be guided by the rules of either the Primitive or the Roman 
 Church. I wish heartily that it were otherwise, and where the 
 old rule can be observed with impunity to health I always re- 
 commend and enjoin it. 
 
 I am sorry that you have no early Celebration at . It is 
 
 far better to receive early than late. But if you cannot gain this, 
 then take what food is absolutely needful to prevent you from 
 being unwell, and commit yourself to God's mercy and love, 
 owning to Him your weakness, and praying Him to bring about 
 in His goodness a more Christian and reverent state of things in 
 the parish where you live.
 
 384 APPENDIX I 
 
 It seems to me that St. Matthias's history ought to help us and 
 give us courage. "The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole 
 disposing of it is of the Lord." In other words, all we have to 
 do is our best, then quietly to leave the rest to Him, not fretting 
 or vexing at misfortune or ill success. He can take care of His 
 own work. We must take care that we do our best ; if this be so 
 we shall have an equal reward with the most successful. And as 
 in the case of St. Matthias, whose election I daresay disappointed 
 the friends of Barsabas, that which seems to us disastrous often 
 is in truth the very best thing for the cause which we are trying 
 to benefit. 
 
 I am inclined to think that knitting, etc., are not good works 
 for Sunday. I do not say that there is anything actually sinful 
 in knitting on Sunday. But it seems to me that it is very im- 
 portant to give Sunday a peculiar character, i.e. the character of 
 a day set apart, so far as we can set it apart from other days, for 
 enabling the soul to hold special converse with God. It is true 
 that, formed as we are, we cannot keep the mind long in close 
 relation to heavenly things; but it is greatly helped in doing 
 this by external arrangements, such as closing the shops, avoid- 
 ance of the ordinary daily occupations, etc. Moreover it is very 
 important to do nothing which may be misinterpreted by those 
 around us, which may lead them to take liberties with what is 
 on the whole an edifying English custom, even though injured and 
 made grotesque by Puritanism.
 
 APPENDIX II. 
 
 ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS READ AT CHURCH CON- 
 GRESSES IN 1869, 1877, 1879, 1883, 1888, AND 1893. 1 
 
 AT the Liverpool Church Congress of 1869, Mr. Butler read a 
 paper on the " Improvement of the Church's Services : how to 
 Increase Attendance at them." 
 
 In this paper he begins by deploring the large numbers in 
 towns like Birmingham and Liverpool who are untouched by the 
 Church's ministrations; he declines to believe that Disestablish- 
 ment (which some good Church people were at that time, it 
 would appear, ready to welcome) would make things any better; 
 Mr. Butler pointed to the Colonies in support of his contention 
 and then he goes on to advocate a greater elasticity in services 
 conducted in mission rooms and chapels ; he would have the 
 litany as a separate service in the evening, or a metrical litany 
 and a sermon, something simple and easy to follow for those (and 
 he admits there are many) for whom matins and evensong are too 
 elaborate. 
 
 But the most remarkable part of this paper is undoubtedly his 
 outspoken utterance on behalf of restoring the Holy Eucharist 
 to its proper place in the public services. "Why," he asks, 
 " have we discarded it from this its due prominence and special 
 character, thrusting it into the end of a long morning service of 
 prayers, psalms, hymns, sermon, when both the heart and 
 head are wearied? We complain of the comparatively small 
 number of our attached church-goers : may we not trace it to 
 this fact 1 ? Observe I am not advocating that the Holy Com- 
 munion should be thrust as it were on all, that all whether fit 
 or unfit should be present at that most solemn service ; but that 
 all should have the opportunity of taking part in it, according 
 
 1 By Rev. Canon Randolph, Principal of Ely Theological College. 
 
 2B
 
 386 APPENDIX II 
 
 to the ancient and catholic rule of the Church, at least once 
 weekly." 
 
 "From Justin Martyr downwards," he says a little before, "in 
 one unbroken tradition, as every one who has the slightest know- 
 ledge of ecclesiastical history cannot fail to perceive, all writers 
 describe this as the service of the Church, that to which all 
 others are mere subsidiary handmaids." 
 
 Among the speakers who followed the reading of the papers 
 were the Hon. C. L. Wood (now Lord Halifax) and the Rev. Dr, 
 Littledale, both of whom strongly supported Mr. Butler's utter- 
 ance about the Holy Communion. 
 
 The paper read at the Church Congress of 1877 was on the 
 temperance question. It is very characteristic of the writer, and 
 illustrates the line he took throughout his life on this difficult 
 subject. 
 
 After some apology, feeling no doubt that he was in a 
 minorit}^ he boldly announces himself opposed to all the three 
 great remedies usually proposed by temperance reformers ; he is 
 against legislation, against the formation of a Church Temperance 
 Society, and against those who preach total abstinence for 
 every one. 
 
 He is against legislation, because " sumptuary laws have had 
 their day. They belong to that against which the free heart of 
 England will ever rebel, which is called a paternal government. 
 Let us not forget that while swaddling clothes no doubt keep 
 children out of mischief, they also restrain the free growth of the 
 limbs. And I venture to contend that there is a certain discip- 
 lining of man's nature, which is to be found in resisting 
 temptation, and which cannot be obtained when temptation is 
 altogether withdrawn." To illustrate this point he contrasts 
 (following Montalembert in the Avenir politigue d 'Angleterre} the 
 system of espionage at a French Jesuit College, with the freedom 
 of an English public school. 
 
 He is against temperance societies, for there must always be 
 a danger in isolating one sin in this sort of way. " Why," he 
 asks, " are we to inculcate temperance only in drink 1 Does not 
 the apostle bid us to be ' temperate in all things ' ? What is 
 there special in drunkenness which places it in a category outside 
 all other sins 1 Are we prepared to have special associations 
 against lying, selfishness, or that sin of the flesh which, if
 
 PAPERS READ AT CHURCH CONGRESSES 387 
 
 drunkenness slays its thousands, may truly be said to slay its 
 tens of thousands I mean the sin of unchastity ?" 
 
 So again, "the Church herself is the National Temperance 
 Association, and all special temperance societies got up within 
 her, tend, I humbly submit, to obscure that! attribute which 
 equally with ' One,' ' Catholic,' and ' Apostolic ' is hers, viz., that 
 of holiness, her right to exact from her members to be holy, not 
 in one thing only, but in all" 
 
 He is against total abstinence, though as a " kill or cure " 
 remedy he would allow it in extreme cases, where it is in fact the 
 only chance ; but he deprecates " the belief that it is necessary 
 or even right that they who would induce others to be sober 
 should themselves entirely abstain." 
 
 Constructively Canon Butler considers that higher intelligence 
 and education, bringing with them higher taste and refinement, 
 will do much for the lower classes, as it has already done much 
 for the higher in respect to this temperance question ; the lesson 
 will work downwards ; he advocates clubs and reading-rooms, 
 "not on too strait-laced principles." "Let lectures be given 
 explaining how the conditions of happiness lie in habits of self- 
 control. . . . Provide two things which too often are not to be 
 obtained, good pure water, and real honest beer, such as our 
 brethren in Germany enjoy, making it penal so far only would 
 I invoke the aid of legislation to sell the poisonous concoctions 
 which more than anything else cause the drunkenness of the 
 working-classes ; and lastly, inculcate early in life that the body 
 is the temple of the Holy Ghost, and not for fleshly defilement of 
 any kind whatever, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." 
 
 Canon Butler read a paper at the Swansea Church Congress 
 in 1879, on the congenial subject of Parish Organisation. On 
 a subject such as this he was, it need not be said, thoroughly 
 at home. Every word was dictated by recollections of his own 
 experience as a parish priest. 
 
 " The longer I live "these are almost the opening words of 
 his paper " the more I believe in the rule, ' stare super antiquas 
 vias'; and I look on the following out of such a system as 
 the Prayer Book suggests, in its unpretentiousness and simplicity, 
 as of infinitely more value in the great battle with evil than 
 some of the more showy efforts of the present day." 
 
 He passes at once to the great question of the schools, ex-
 
 388 APPENDIX II 
 
 pressing his conviction that "well-organised schools lie at the 
 very foundation of all good parochial work," and that " no 
 cajolement or threat should induce the pastor to suffer his 
 schools to pass from the hands of the Church." He asserts 
 his conviction that the "battle of the Church is to be fought 
 in the schools," that no pains should be spared in making 
 them efficient, that the parish priest should himself take a 
 lively part in their working, that he should see by actual 
 investigation that the Catechism is thoroughly learnt and under- 
 stood, that the children's private prayers are said ; that he 
 should " draw round himself, and not leave merely to the 
 masters' and mistresses' enforced hours of instruction, the 
 pupil teachers, and carefully supervise their religious teach- 
 ing " ; and that he should establish between himself and 
 the head teachers the relation of true and loving friendship, 
 "as between those who are engaged in one great common 
 work for the glory and praise of God." 
 
 He speaks appreciatingly of Guilds for deepening the spiritual 
 life, and warns against the snare of " setting quantity before 
 quality " ; and he especially emphasises the importance of com- 
 municants' classes, that is, of classes called together and 
 regularly prepared for Holy Communion every month : they 
 work towards this special end, and for this reason they have 
 an advantage, he thinks, over ordinary Bible classes. They 
 involve, he admits, "intense and unremitting labour": "they 
 must be carefully arranged and adapted with a view to 
 difference of age, intelligence, and above all, to those nice 
 grades of social position which exist among the people." Such 
 classes will, he thinks, nearly cover the ground of many other 
 possible organisations. 
 
 There follows in this paper a characteristic warning 
 against too much organisation : "a fussy beating up of 
 recruits and subscriptions, writing reports and rushing from 
 meeting to meeting." He pleads for loyalty to the Prayer 
 Book specially in the matter of daily service throughout 
 the year. The service, he insists, said daily in the Church 
 "organises the organiser," that is, the clergyman himself. 
 " It keeps him to his work ; it provides for his flock an 
 opportunity of finding him at his post; it spreads over his 
 work that character of dutifulness to the directions of the
 
 PAPERS READ AT CHURCH CONGRESSES 389 
 
 Church ; the lack of which lies, as I think, at the root of our 
 most pressing difficulties." He insists on the importance of 
 regular visiting, and urges that no machinery or organisation 
 ought to be allowed to supersede the pastor's "own regular 
 and loving visits to his flock." "Of this," he says, "I am 
 quite sure that when it may be done, even as Sir Robert 
 Peel pressed on his supporters the famous advice of 'Register, 
 register, register,' so visit, visit, visit, not by proxy, but in 
 person, face to face and heart to heart, should be the parson's 
 rule." 
 
 In speaking of Sunday schools he quoted a letter that had 
 reached his hands from an ' earnest and capable master,' which 
 so well illustrates a danger well known to parish priests that 
 it is worth while to transcribe it here: 
 
 "I fall in with the work in the day school very well, and 
 as yet I have had no difficulties to overcome. My great 
 grievance, however, is the Sunday school, at which a host of 
 ten teachers attend, five of whom are good ladies from the 
 village. It is hard to see those who know nothing of teaching 
 take the authority out of one's hand, and undo in an hour or 
 two a whole week's work. The kind-hearted ladies are inclined 
 only to smile at the dear little bairns when they are at all 
 refractory, or engage in some paltry little squabble ; and Johnny 
 dear is told that his lady teacher will be so very very angry, 
 if he persists in getting over the desks, or speaks impertinently 
 to his kind instructor. I am deposed from the position of 
 head master for the first day of every week." 
 
 Mr. Butler's comment is, that on Sunday "the day school 
 should be carried on mutatis mutandis as on week-days, 
 under its natural teachers, while the Sunday school, under it- 
 voluntary teachers, consisting of children who only attend on 
 Sundays, should be held in a separate room, or, better still, 
 as so many separate classes in private houses." 
 
 At the Church Congress at Reading in 1883, Canon Butler 
 read a paper on Purity. 
 
 The special department of the subject which fell to his lot 
 was the prevention of the degradation of women and children. 
 The paper is difficult to epitomise : it is full of sympathy and 
 tenderness, combined with simple and practical suggestions as 
 to how best to help those who need help.
 
 390 APPENDIX II 
 
 There is a passage on the general condition of society which 
 shows how keenly alive was the writer to the great dangers 
 in this direction : 
 
 "In speaking of woman's degradation," he says, "let us not 
 shut our eyes to the general condition of society. There is 
 other degradation besides that which obtrudes itself in the 
 streets. Those who mix much with the world mourn over a 
 general laxity of tone which seems to be permitted conversa- 
 tion of a loose and suggestive kind ; theatrical performances 
 taken from the free and immoral literature of France ; that 
 which some years ago would have been scouted, now witnessed 
 and enjoyed ; French novels, where evil is freely set forth 
 and spoken of as good, read even by young girls growing 
 into womanhood ; men whose lives are notoriously profligate 
 encouraged, sometimes even by mothers ; the tie of marriage no 
 hindrance to dangerous intimacies, sometimes not falling short 
 of gross and flagrant sin. If this is not degradation of women, 
 it is difficult to say what it is." 
 
 The central portion of the paper is taken up with describing 
 the actual state of the law in regard to the protection of 
 women ; the writer points out clearly where legislation is 
 insufficient, and then goes on to speak of what might be done, 
 apart from legislation, in a preventive direction by private 
 enterprise. He insists on the much-needed improvement of 
 dwelling-houses, and then passes on to speak of the need of 
 great caution in regard to mixed schools. A small tract, 
 entitled "A Few Words to School Mistresses," published by 
 Hatchards, is recommended, for it " may with great advantage 
 be placed in the hands of teachers, with reiterated warnings 
 not to live in what is called a fool's paradise, but to be 
 watchful and even suspicious of every approach to familiarity 
 between boys and girls." 
 
 There is a strong plea for the establishment in every neigh- 
 bourhood of moderately-sized industrial schools where girls may 
 be received for about two years during the critical period 
 between leaving school and going out into the regular work 
 of life, when, as Mr. Butler so truly says, "employers of the 
 better kind decline to hire them, and then they often linger 
 on at home, or accept a low and often very dangerous kind 
 of situation."
 
 PAPERS READ AT CHURCH CONGRESSES 391 
 
 In these proposed industrial schools the girls may be well 
 nurtured and trained, "well instructed in the principles of 
 their religion, taught to pray, to respect themselves, to believe 
 in and to love God, confirmed and made regular communicants; 
 and then, and not till then, sent out to fight the battle of life." 
 In what he says here, as always, the writer is speaking from 
 the background of his own wide experience, for he adds, " I 
 know what can in this way be done, how from such an in- 
 stitution there may be sent forth, year after year, a stream of 
 high-toned, high-principled girls, capable and trustworthy as 
 servants, and, so far as is possible to human nature, raised into 
 a condition of thought and feeling in which they recoil with 
 horror from all that is unmaidenly or impure." 
 
 Canon Butler expresses his satisfaction that so many callings 
 are now opened to women which were formerly closed to them, 
 and thinks that the more these openings are multiplied, "the 
 more that women are incited to that which encourages and 
 demands propriety of demeanour and self-respect, and which 
 provides a fair means of living the more will woman be freed 
 from the danger which so grievously besets her life." 
 
 In 1888, at the Church Congress held at Manchester, the 
 Dean of Lincoln read a paper on the " Desirableness of Reviving 
 the Common Religious Life of Men." 
 
 Dr. Butler's paper was unfortunately lost before reaching the 
 publishers. There is, however, a brief summary of it given in 
 the Report of the Congress, which we reproduce here with 
 little or no alteration. 
 
 The writer dealt with the subject as applied to clergymen. 
 He described what, as he believed, were the needs of the 
 present time in dealing with the large populations of our great 
 towns. In London alone were four millions and upwards 
 of people, to whom about six hundred clergy ministered, and 
 they not distributed in a manner likely to hear the real calls 
 for help. Liverpool in like manner had 600,000 souls, with 
 seventy clergymen. Other towns also told the same tale, 
 showing that the present parochial system was utterly in- 
 adequate to meet the demands made upon the clergy. What 
 must, he asked, be the inevitable result? The complete chaos 
 of society, the falling, as too many symptoms already showed, 
 into a condition of materialism and inutility worse than the
 
 392 APPENDIX II 
 
 worst days of barbarism. They wanted some means of dealing 
 more adequately with the large masses of the population. Was 
 it within the bounds of reason and common sense to imagine 
 that the great problem could be dealt with on a large scale 
 without having recourse to something very different to the 
 methods that had hitherto been tried 1 
 
 He suggested that religious houses should be established 
 among the clergy for the better prosecution of evangelizing 
 work. When he ventured to speak of the desirableness of 
 reviving the common religious life of clergymen, it was because 
 he was convinced that in no other way could the crying needs 
 of the Church be met. Taking the very lowest ground, it 
 seemed to him that if the Church was in any way to fulfil 
 her great trust of preaching the gospel to every creature, it 
 could be effected only by the devotion and self-sacrifice of 
 men who would consent to lead a celibate life; to give up, 
 either permanently or for. a stated time, much of that which, 
 to use a common expression, sweetened life ; to cut them- 
 selves off, at least in a great degree, from the engagements 
 and expenses of ordinary society, and dwelling together under a 
 aommon roof and taking their meals at a common table, would 
 be in a position to bring to bear common counsel, common 
 action, and common intercession upon darkness, and ignorance, 
 and sin. Men thus living together would be spared the 
 sense of loneliness and helplessness, which so often weighed 
 down the spirits and paralysed the energies of men who from 
 poverty or any other cause, found themselves living alone 
 with almost no support. 
 
 He would suggest that those who would offer themselves 
 for this common life should bind themselves for a period of 
 not longer than five years, which might, at will, be renewable ; 
 that they should agree honestly to follow the rule which the 
 Prayer Book provided, keeping strictly to what was there 
 laid down, to the feasts and fasts, the daily service, frequent 
 Communion, with any additional services for which they might 
 have time and inclination. The dress should not be peculiar 
 or demonstrative, and the diet simple and plain, but sufficient. 
 Such societies should be directly under episcopal supervision, 
 whether as regarded the central or parent house, or the 
 districts in which its members laboured.
 
 PAPERS READ AT CHURCH CONGRESSES 393 
 
 The Congress held at Birmingham in 1893 was the last at 
 which Dr. Butler appeared. 
 
 The subject assigned to him then was " The Ministry of the 
 Laity," and the special department of the subject which fell to 
 his lot was that on which he could speak with paramount 
 authority, viz., Deaconesses and Sisters. 
 
 The paper is of special interest, not only because it is the last 
 which the Dean read, but also because it brings out in a very 
 striking and beautiful way his intense appreciation of the 
 ' religious ' life, and of all that such a life implies. 
 
 He begins by contrasting the favourable and grateful recog- 
 nition given to Sisterhoods in the present day, with the way in 
 which they would have been regarded before the rise of the 
 Oxford movement. Now nearly all the prejudice against such 
 institutions has passed away; there are more Sisters more 
 women aiming at the Religious life in England now than there 
 were before the Reformation, and now not merely in England, but 
 throughout the world in India, Africa, and America, English 
 Sisters are at work. 
 
 " A Sister's theory of ' vocation ' is that in a very true though 
 ineffable and mysterious manner our blessed Lord calls to 
 Himself certain souls, who for His sake shall give up all; that 
 He infuses into such souls a burning desire to be His, a true love 
 even like^ the love of man to woman, or of woman to man, only 
 far nobler and more exalted ; that when this exists in any soul 
 it finds no rest till it has given itself for the things of God ; that 
 this vocation is not to this or that work, possibly not at all 
 to what is called work, but solely to be His, just as the true wife, 
 without reference to house or household duties, finds in him 
 whom she loves all that satisfies her heart. So the Sister is her 
 Beloved's, and her Beloved is hers. Willingly for His sake she 
 labours ; but her great aim, the object of all her longing, is to be 
 altogether His." 
 
 As to vows, Dr. Butler is clear as to their intrinsic reasonable- 
 ness and their use. 
 
 " Let me be permitted," he says, " to say something on this 
 very delicate and controverted question. I cannot, after much 
 consideration, sympathise with the strong objection which some 
 excellent people hold in regard to vows. I quite agree that where 
 vows are permitted to be taken there should be a discretionary
 
 394 APPENDIX II 
 
 dispensing power. But with this, which surely lies within the 
 range of episcopal jurisdiction, I cannot see, considering the 
 number of vows which are accepted on all hands as right and 
 proper baptismal vows, repeated in confirmation ; ordination 
 vows, marriage vows, and that which is so strongly urged by 
 many, the pledge or vow of abstinence from any form of 
 alcohol why those vows are to be looked upon as evil things, 
 or at least, as full of danger, whereby men or women of mature 
 age offer themselves to God." 
 
 He quotes Jeremy Taylor in support of his contention as to 
 the legitimacy of vows. " It hath pleased God in all ages of the 
 world to admit of intercourse with His servants in the matter 
 of vows." 
 
 He insists, it is unnecessary to say, on the wise safeguard of a 
 long and thorough noviciate, during which time every opportunity 
 should be given to those who are thinking of the ' religious ' life 
 of clearly understanding the difficulties of such a state ; but, after 
 all precautions have been taken, he sees no reason why any who 
 wish to do so should not by a solemn promise or vow dedicate 
 their lives to God. 
 
 Further, he insists that a vow has distinct advantages. Like 
 the marriage vow, it settles the question for good and all. It 
 quiets that restlessness from which none of us are altogether free. 
 It helps the ' religious ' to bear cheerfully difficulties which " are 
 sure, sooner or later, to crop up." As in marriage, which the 
 religious life closely resembles, the die is cast, and any who have 
 cast it find their happiness in accepting what it brings. 
 
 Among the advantages of Sisterhoods on which the Dean insists 
 are such as these Continuity of work : they bring with them a 
 guarantee for at least such perpetuity as is possible in the changes 
 and chances of life. 
 
 The moral weight and power which is ensured by discipline : the Sister 
 sets aside her own private likes and dislikes. She goes whither 
 she is sent. All that is given her to do is, in her estimation, 
 God's work, and therefore equally good. 
 
 The knowledge which results from the experience which a 
 Community gains in respect to methods of work. Each Sister is 
 trained and taught how to act under various circumstances ; how 
 to enter securely the haunts of vice and crime; how to meet 
 rudeness ; how to maintain an uniform self-control and gentleness ;
 
 PAPERS READ AT CHURCH CONGRESSES 395 
 
 how to speak a word in season. In Penitentiary work especially 
 (which gave the first main impetus to the growth, in these later 
 times, of the Religious life in the Church of England) experience 
 has proved that the influence of Sisters living under a rule is of 
 incalculable value. 
 
 At the conclusion of this very remarkable paper the question 
 is discussed how far and under what conditions the Church as a 
 whole should accept such institutions as Sisterhoods and Deacon- 
 esses, and the main answer which the Dean gives to this question 
 is as follows : That it is better to leave such institutions to feel 
 their way and to be proved before any direct interference or 
 recognition is given them on the part of the Church. For the 
 present the wise course is to leave these Communities to the care 
 and wisdom of the Bishops, for episcopal supervision is, he thinks, 
 essential ; and he does not consider that a Community is formed on 
 a solid basis where the Bishop has been ignored, any more than 
 Communities are justified in altering at their own wish and 
 pleasure the services of the Prayer Book. 
 
 The paper concludes with the following words : " It was once 
 said to me by one of another Communion, ' You English are good 
 people in your own way ; you have a good-natured disposition, 
 and therefore do many good things, and abstain from much that 
 is evil ; but you do not accept the idea of grace, or know what it 
 can do for you.' Here, then, in these religious Communities we 
 have the answer. We may, I think, truly say that they have 
 taken away this reproach from Israel. 
 
 "Very earnestly I pray that many living souls may be enabled 
 to join them, to partake with them in that life of union with our 
 blessed Lord, which brings with it true joy and peace, and to aid 
 them in their blessed work of winning souls to Him."
 
 INDEX. 
 
 [In the following Index L and ff. mean following pages, and n. that the 
 reference is to thejootnote as well as to the pages indicated.] 
 
 Aldworth, Miss, 47. 
 Allies, T. W., 65. 
 Amwell, in Herts, 5. 
 Anderson, Sir Charles, 334. 
 Andrewes, Bishop, 309. 
 Armstrong, Rev. John, 132. 
 Arnold, Dr., 10, 21, 364. 
 Ashington, Miss, 140. 
 Augustine's, St., Missionary Col- 
 lege, 62. 
 
 Bagot, Bishop, 212. 
 
 Baker, Mrs. Arthur, vi. 
 
 Balaton, Rev. E., 10, 63. 
 
 Barff, Rev. A., 143, 220. 
 
 Barry, Canon, 303. 
 
 Beauchamp, Lord, 304, 314, 374. 
 
 Beauclerk, Mr., 252, 261. 
 
 Belson, Rev. Mr., 248. 
 
 Bennett, Rev. W. J. E., 206, 209, 
 215. 
 
 Benson, Archbishop, of Canter- 
 bury, 172. 
 
 Benson, Father, 181. 
 
 Berens, Archdeacon, 95. 
 
 Besson, Pere, 286. 
 
 Bismarck, Count, 252. 
 
 Blakesley, Rev. J. W., 63. 
 
 Brackenbury, Captain, 245, 251, 
 255. 
 
 Bradley, Henry, 308. 
 
 Bricknell, Rev. Simcox, 37. 
 
 Bright, Canon, 205 n. 
 
 Bristol Times, 55. 
 
 British- Critic, 212. 
 
 Burgon, Dean, of Chichester, 282. 
 
 Bushnan, Mr., 263 f., 267, 270. 
 
 Butler, Arthur J., son of W. J. 
 
 Butler, 26. 
 
 Emma, wife of W. J. Butler, 
 26, 30, 166, 219, 233, 277, 
 287, 288, 295, 337, 366 f., 
 368, 370 ff. 
 
 Henrietta, wife of J. L. Butler, 
 1 ; letters to her son, 14, 18 ; 
 death, 310. 
 
 John Laforey, father of W. J. 
 Butler, 1 ; failure of his busi- 
 ness, 17; letter to his son, 19. 
 William John, birth, 1 ; parents, 
 1 ; Queen's Scholar, West- 
 minster, 3 ; at Trinity Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, 4 ff. ; pre- 
 pares for Holy Orders, 18 ; 
 engagement to Emma Bar- 
 nett, 26 ; curacy of Putten- 
 ham, 26 ; marriage, 26 ; in- 
 cumbent of Wareside, 27 ff. ; 
 living of Wantage, 36 ; goes 
 to Wantage, 46 ; work under 
 Bishop Wilberforce, 51, 53 ; 
 life at Wantage, 56 f., 71 ff. ; 
 parochial work, 107 ff., 118 
 ff. ; elected Bishop of Natal, 
 225 ; experiences during the 
 Franco-German war, 244-276;
 
 INDEX 
 
 397 
 
 proctor in convocation, 281 
 ff. ; canonry in Worcester, 
 293; Dean of Lincoln, 312; 
 life at Lincoln, 346 ff. ; ' gold- 
 en wedding,' 364 ; death, 372; 
 letters : to his father, 38 ; to 
 his mother, 15, 309 ; to his 
 sister, 15, 97, 98, 309, 334, 
 344 ; to his wife, 36, 46, 47, 
 99, 194-204, 246-276 ; on the 
 Gorharn judgement, 80 ff. ; 
 see also Keble, Liddon, 
 Manning, Wilberforce. 
 Butterfield, W., 35, 57, 59, 65. 
 
 Canning, Rev. William, Canon of 
 
 Windsor, 26, 36, 39. 
 Carter, Canon T. T., 78, 87, 94 ff., 
 
 174, 183, 188, 212. 
 Catechism, Church, on the teach- 
 ing of, 49 f., 87 f., Appendix 
 
 II. 
 
 Chamberlain, 63. 
 Chambers, Rev. J. C., 188. 
 Charlton, hamlet, 56 f., 67, 100. 
 Church congresses, papers read 
 
 at, Appendix II. 
 Church, Dean, 178. 
 Church Times, 311. 
 Churton, Archdeacon Ed., 188. 
 Clerke, Archdeacon, 91. 
 Clutterbuck, Rev. J. C., 283. 
 Coddington, Rev. H., sometime 
 
 Vicar of Ware, 27. 
 Coles, Rev. V. S. S., reminiscences 
 
 by, 174-222. 
 
 Colenso, Bishop, 195, 223 ff. 
 Coleridge, J. D., 63. 
 Coleridge, Sir J. T., 21, 68, 286. 
 Communion, Holy, 207 ; passim, 
 
 357, Appendix II., 385. 
 Community of St. Mary, 152ff., 
 
 156 n., 166 f., 180 ff. 
 Compton, Lady Alwyne, 295, 301 f. 
 Confession, practice of, 65, 67 ; 
 
 Declaration on, 184 ff. 
 Cotton, Rev. G. E. L. (Bishop of 
 
 Calcutta), 5, 16. 
 
 Cotton, Dr., 37. 
 Courtenay, Rev. C. L., 21."). 
 Cox, Rev. F. H.,225. 
 Crawley of Littlemore, 63. 
 Cyprian, St., 195. 
 
 Davidson, Rev. R. T. (Bishop of 
 
 Winchester), 210, 213, 215. 
 Day, Harriet (Superior of St. 
 
 Mary's Home), 85, 130, 138, 
 
 142. 
 
 Dealtry, Dr., 25. 
 
 Denison, Archdeacon, 88, 174, 188. 
 Diocesan societies, 52. 
 Dixon, W., 143, 220. 
 Donaldson, J. W., 7. 
 Drew, G. H., vi., 16. 
 Duport, Rev. J., 113. 
 Dyson, Rev. Charles, Rector of 
 Dogmersfield, 21, 22, 38, 49, 
 236 f., 286, 364. 
 
 Mrs., letters from, 31, 44. 
 
 Miss, 286. 
 
 Ecce Homo, 289. 
 Ecclesiastical Polity, 193. 
 Education, elementary, 53. 
 Elton, Rev. Edw., 281, 284. 
 
 Faber, Rev. F. W., 10. 
 
 Fairer, M. T., 4. 
 
 Forbes, A. P. (Bishop of Brechin), 
 
 219. 
 
 Fouque, 287, 367. 
 Fowler, Canon, recollections of, 
 
 328 ff., 360. 
 Frank, Dr., 262. 
 Freeling, Rev. G. N., 205, 282, 
 
 357. 
 Freeman, Archdeacon Philip, 4, 
 
 10, 67, 189, 219, 228, 237. 
 Freeman, Rev. Stephen, 2. 
 French, Rev. T. V., 113 (Bishop 
 
 of Lahore). 
 Froude, J. A., 10. 
 Froude, Hurrell, 378. 
 Furse, Rev. C. W., 190 n. 
 Fust, Sir H. Jenner, 76.
 
 398 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Galton, Rev. J. L., 188. 
 
 Gerontius, 289 f. 
 
 Gilbert, Sister Charlotte, 130, 137, 
 138. 
 
 Gilbertson, Rev. Lewis, 188. 
 
 Gladstone, Rt. Hon. W. E. G., 97, 
 106, 151 n., 292, 355. 
 
 Goodman, Miss, 264. 
 
 Gordon, General, 220. 
 
 Gordon, Rev. Robert, 188. 
 
 Gorhani judgement, 73, 75 ff., 
 80 ff., 95, 208 f., 242. 
 
 Grafton, Father, 188. 
 
 Gratry, Pere, 377. 
 
 Gray, Robert (Bishop of Cape- 
 town), 113, 223 ff., 227, 232 n., 
 277. 
 
 Grey, Rev. Hon. Francis, 188. 
 
 Hamon. M., Cure" de S. Sulpice, 
 
 195, 199. 
 
 Harperath, Herr, 246, 250. 
 Harvey, Rev. R., 90. 
 Hazen, General, 252. 
 Heath, J. M., 63. 
 Hedger, Sister Catherine, 140. 
 Higgens, Rev. R. , recollections of, 
 
 29. 
 Hills, Rev. G. (Bishop of British 
 
 Columbia), 113. 
 Hobart, Hon. H. L., Dean of 
 
 Windsor, 36. 
 
 Hodgson, K. D., M.P., 362. 
 Hodson, Rev. G. H., 4. 
 Hogan, M., 195. 
 Holloway, Rev. E. J., 357. 
 Home, St. Mary's, 143 ff., 156 n., 
 
 172. 
 Home, St. Mary's, branches of, 
 
 156 n. 
 
 Hooker, method of, 193. 
 Hospitium, at Cambridge, 43 f. 
 Houblon, Rev. T. Archer-, 59, 143. 
 Houblon, Rev. T. H. Archer-, 220, 
 
 295. 
 
 Hozier, Captain, 274. 
 Humphry, W. G., Vicar of St. 
 
 Martin's-in-the-Fields, 7, 65. 
 
 Joan of Arc, 202, 345. 
 John, Lord (Russell), 58. 
 Johnston & Co., failure of, 17 ff. 
 Jones, Rev. W. W. (Bishop of 
 Capetown), 282. 
 
 Keble, Rev. John, 21, 25, 26 n., 31, 
 32 f., 35, 40 ff., 48 f., 63, 67 f., 
 70, 74, 76 ff., 87, 150 f., 82, 127, 
 137, 140, 154, 170, 208, 234 f., 
 n., 236 ff., 286, 307, 339, 341, 
 353, 364, 381. 
 
 Keble, Rev. Thomas, 26 n., 188, 
 236. 
 
 Keble, Mrs. John, 32, 41, 65, 234 ff. 
 
 Kennedy, George, 4, 16. 
 
 King, Rev. E. (Bishop of Lincoln), 
 284. 
 
 Knox-Little, Canon W. J., 303. 
 
 Laity, ministry of, 393. 
 
 Lawrence, E. J., 4, 16. 
 
 Lefroy, Rev. A., curate at Dog- 
 mersfield, 22. 
 
 Leighton, Dr., Warden of All 
 Souls, 281. 
 
 Liddell, Rev. Hon. Robert, 1S8. 
 
 Liddon, Canon H. P., vii., 54, 90, 
 100, 101, 104 ff., 175 n., 188, 
 204, 209 f., 212, 223, 227, 230, 
 232, 235, 239 ff., 243 f., 277, 
 280, 283 f., 290 ff., 297, 306 f. 
 
 Literary Churchman, 107, 116, 
 118. 
 
 Littlemore, 35, 41, 43, 146. 
 
 Lloyd, Canon Charles, 282. 
 
 Lock, Rev. Walter, 234. 
 
 Lockhart, Elizabeth Crawford, 
 Mother Superior at Wantage, 
 73, 86, 128 ff., 133, 134, 208. 
 
 Loftus, Lord Augustus, 245, 248. 
 
 Longley, Archbishop, 183, 225, 230. 
 
 Lothair, 301. 
 
 Loyd-Lindsay, Col. R. (Lord 
 Wantage), 122 f. 
 
 Luard, Rev. H. R., 106, 189. 
 
 Lyra Innocentium, 238. 
 
 Lyttelton, Lord, 9.
 
 INDEX 
 
 399 
 
 MacCormac, Dr., 262. 
 Mackarness, Rev. J. F. (Bishop 
 
 of Oxford), 212, 281, 282, 
 
 355. 
 Mackonochie, Rev. A. H., of St. 
 
 Alban's, Holborn, 90 n., 100, 
 
 188, 205 f., 297. 
 Macrorie, Rev. W. K. (Bishop of 
 
 Maritzburg), 114. 
 Maddison, Rev. A. R., recollec- 
 tions of, 318 ff. 
 Magazine for the Young, 287. 
 Manning, Archdeacon (Cardinal), 
 
 vii, 25, 66, 69, 73, 95, 100, 130, 
 
 132, 134, 137, 208. 
 Marriott, Rev. Charles, 25, 43, 
 
 48, 63, 154, 170. 
 Martagnac, Mons. de, 254, 260. 
 Mason, Mrs., 257. 
 Mathison, Rev. W. C., 4. 
 Mayow, Rev. M. W., 188. 
 Medd, Rev. P., 243. 
 Meditations for Every Day, 45. 
 Melville, Canon, 303. 
 Michael's, St., Schools, 156 n., 
 
 165. 
 
 Milman, Rev. R. (Bishop of Cal- 
 cutta), 92, 95, 143, 290. 
 Milmau, Miss, 232, 281. 
 Modeste, Pere, 202. 
 Montalembert, 377, 386. 
 Montgomery, Dean (Edinburgh), 
 
 363. 
 
 Mozley, Rev. J. B., 63, 65. 
 Murray, Rev. F. H., Rector of 
 
 Chislehurst, 188. 
 
 Natal, see Colenso. 
 Nelson, Rev. Dr., 89. 
 Newbolt, Canon W. E., 220. 
 Newman, J. H. (Cardinal), 127, 
 
 238, 286, 367, 377. 
 Noel, Rev. Montague, 175 n., 
 
 176 n., 220. 
 
 O'Neill, Rev. S. W., 175 f., 297. 
 Osborne, Miss, 157. 
 Overstone, Lord, 235. 
 
 Oxford, organization of the dio- 
 cese, see Wilberforce, 51. 
 Bishop, see Wilberforce. 
 "Tracts," 154. 
 
 Page, Cyril, 65. 
 
 Palmer, William, 31. 
 
 Panel, M., Cure of St. Ouen, 336, 
 
 373. 
 
 Paradisus Animtr, 360. 
 "Parish Journal" (of Wantage), 
 
 72, 84, 89, 106, 115, 124 f, 130, 
 
 142, 146, 222 n., 235 n., 298. 
 Parish organization, 387 ff. 
 Parizet, M. 1'Abbe, 200. 
 Patrick, Henrietta, 1 ; see Butler. 
 Patrick, Robert, 1, 26. 
 Patterson, Rev. J. C., 63, 65. 
 Pearson, Miss, 254, 256 f. 
 Penitentiary Church work, 132 ff. 
 Phillpotts, Bishop, of Exeter, 83. 
 Pittar, 201. 
 
 Ply, M. 1'Abbe, 199, 201. 
 Pollen, J. H., 63, 65. 
 Pollock, Rev. James, 220. 
 
 Rev. T. B., of St. Alban's, Bir- 
 mingham, 220 ; recollections, 
 373 ff. 
 
 Popham, Rev. J., 90. 
 Porter, Reginald, 91, 220, 255, 257. 
 Pott, Rev. Alfred, Archdeacon of 
 
 Berks, recollections, 50 ff. 
 Powis, Lord, 63. 
 Puller, C., M.P., 63, 65. 
 Purdue, Rev. G., 90. 
 Pusey, Dr. E. B., 35, 48, 82, 127, 
 
 154, 170, 188, 191, 223, 228, 243, 
 
 339, 353, 367, 371, 374, 383. 
 Pnsey, Philip, 80, 140. 
 
 Raikes, H. C., M.P., 336. 
 Randall, Archdeacon, 91. 
 Randall, Rev. R. W., Dean of 
 
 Chichester, 188. 
 
 Randolph, Dean, of Hereford, 65. 
 Recit d'une Sceur, 169 n. 
 "Retreats," 33 f., 35, 155, 167 f., 
 
 201, -'1.
 
 4<x> 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Riddell, Rev. James, 102 f., 105, 
 
 190 n. 
 
 Riddell, Hutton-, E. M., vii., 363. 
 Ridsdale case, 209. 
 Rodger, Dr., 274. 
 Rose, Rev. Hugh James, 154. 
 
 Sacquet, Captain, 273, 275, 276 n. 
 Sadler, Prebendary, 379. 
 Sawyer, Rev. W. G., 90, 92 ff., 
 
 143, 281, 284, 293, 312. 
 Sedgwick, Professor, 4. 
 Sellon, Miss, 128, 237. 
 Selwyn, Bishop, 113. 
 Sermonsfor Working Men, 167, 237. 
 Services, the Church's, Appendix 
 
 II. 
 
 Seymour, Rev. R., 292. 
 Shadwell, Alfred, 16. 
 Shairp, J. C., Principal, of St. 
 
 Andrews, 180 n. 
 Sharp, Rev. John, Vicar of Hor- 
 
 bury, 188. 
 
 Shuttleworth, Sir J. K., 63. 
 Sintram, see Fouque. 
 Sisterhood, see Wantage. 
 Clewer, 140. 
 Dr. Pusey's, 127. 
 School, 147 f. 
 Sisterhoods, see Appendix II., 
 
 393 ff. 
 
 Skinner, Rev. James, 188. 
 Smyth, Professor, 4. 
 'Spiritual Letters,' Appendix I. 
 Stanley, Dean, 21. 
 Stanhope, Banks, 362. 
 Stanhope, Right Hon. Edward, 
 
 368. 
 
 Stratford de Redclyffe, Lord, 26. 
 Street, G. E., 62, 84. 
 Stroud, Mrs., 91. 
 Stuart, 228. 
 
 Stubbs, Professor (Bishop of Ox- 
 ford), 243. 
 Swansea, Lord, 362. 
 
 Tait, Bishop, 232. 
 Taylor, Canon Isaac, 308. 
 
 Temple, Rt. Rev. F., Archbishop, 
 
 242 n. 
 
 Tennant, Mrs., 133. 
 Thompson, Dr., Master of Trinity, 
 
 63, 251. 
 
 Thomson, Archbishop, 232. 
 Tracts for the Times, 287. 
 Trench, Rev. R. C. (Archbishop 
 
 of Dublin), 63, 65, 308. 
 Trinder, Rev. D., 92, 142. 
 Tween, Mr. Walter, recollections 
 
 of, 29. 
 
 Vaughan, Rev. C. J. (Dean of 
 Llandaff), 4, 5, 6, 9, 26, 63. 
 
 Venables, Rev. A. R. P. (Bishop 
 of Nassau), 241 n. 
 
 Vincent, Rev. T., 48, 49, 63, 135. 
 
 Waddington, |M. , French Ambas- 
 sador, 332. 
 
 Wantage, characteristics of, 26. 
 the living, 36. 
 historical associations, 36. 
 'Black Wantage,' 54, 55. 
 described in the Bristol Times, 
 
 55 f. 
 
 an ordination at, 61. 
 restoration of the church, 84 f. , 
 
 90. 
 
 Sisterhood, 73, 127-173, 320. 
 Wantage, Lord(seeLoyd-Lindsay)- 
 Wareside, "recollections" of old 
 
 parishioners, 29. 
 account of the parishioners, 
 
 28. 
 Weaver, Rev. J. C., Curate ut 
 
 Wantage, 277. 
 Webb, Rev. B., 4, 63. 
 W T elby, Canon, 362. 
 Wesley, John, 340. 
 Westminster School, 3. 
 White, Rev. G. C., 188. 
 Wilberforce, Henry, 25, 63, 65, 
 
 130, 136 n., 138 f. 
 Samuel, Bishop of Oxford, 50, 
 51, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 63, 86, 
 94, 288, 355.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Wilkins, Mrs. Caroline, vii.,279 
 294, 302, 307, 310, 341 ff. 
 
 Williams, George, Vicar of Ring- 
 wood, 188. 
 
 Williams, Isaac, 33, 34, 63. 
 
 Wilson, Rev. A., 358. 
 
 Wilson, Rev. R. F., 188. 
 
 Wood, Hon. C. L. (Lord Halifax) 
 254, 257, 260, 386. 
 
 401 
 
 Woodward, Rev. H. H., vi, 217. 
 Woodyer, H., 62, 101, 112. 
 Wordsworth, Rev. C. (Biahop of 
 Lincoln), 113, 143. 
 
 Yonge, Miss, 239, 285, 338, 341. 
 recollections of Wantage 286 
 290. 
 
 THE END.
 
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