1852.. His Nepotism. 83 man warned him that if he persevered in his cause it would cost him not less than five or six thousand pounds, before he could hope to establish his right. This was a sum utterly beyond his power to raise, and he had therefore no alternative but to withdraw from the ruinous contest, on which he had already expended four hundred pounds which he could ill spare. Perhaps he thought that upon his speedy submission some compunctious feeling would lead the prelate, who had enriched his own family at his expense, to give him some small benefice in lieu of the valuable living of which he had been despoiled. But such hopes, if he entertained them, proved fallacious; he had no resource but to seek a precarious subsistence in some distant curacy, and submit, with such resignation as he might, to the total loss of his property and the ruin of his prospects; a conspicuous victim of episcopal special-pleading. * We have mentioned this case to illustrate the Bishop's love of power; but it serves equally to exemplify his love of family advancement, the gratification of which we have considered as the second great end of his policy. In this respect, it must be confessed, his conduct has not been without precedents in his own order. He may plead the example of too many ecclesiastics, English and foreign, in defence of nepotism. As there are some men unius libri, men of a single book, who know that cherished volume so well that they seem to know no other; so there are some bishops unius versus, men of a single text, whose Scriptural knowledge seems limited to that favourite passage, 'he that provideth not for his own house is worse than an infidel.' We fear St. Paul would have been astonished, had he been told that his words were construed into a direction to the successors of Timothy to give all the best preferment of their dioceses to their sons and nephews. We cannot but think it possible that he might have rebuked such an interpretation by an appeal to those startling words of the ancient Scriptures, Wherefore 'honourest thou thy sons above me, to make yourselves fat with the chiefest of all the offerings of Israel my people?' Such, however, being the orthodox Episcopal interpretation of St. Paul's words, we cannot wonder that so many of our bishops should act upon the supposed precept. Yet we must do them * The public has enjoyed, in the case which we have just recorded, an opportunity of estimating the fitness of the Bishop's choice of his relatives. His nephew, the intruding Vicar of Stockland, before the first year of his incumbency had expired, was found guilty in an action in the County Court of an assault upon one of his parishioners. † 1 Sam. ii. 29. the justice to say, that in thus providing for their families they very seldom overstep the bounds of decency. The relatives whom they select for preferment are respectable, if not distinguished; marked by clerical decorum, if not by apostolic zeal. Here again there is one exception, and that exception is Bishop Philpotts. He alone has so far prostituted the most sacred function of his office as to confer ordination upon one whose offences had (by the Bishop's own regulations) excluded him from holy orders altogether; and the offender so ordained was his own son. To estimate the character of this transaction, some of our readers may need to be informed that all bishops require candidates for ordination from the universities to produce testimonials of conduct from their respective colleges; and these college testimonials, being thus indispensable for ordination, are never refused by a college to any of its members without the extremest reluctance. Indeed, if any accusation can be made against our colleges, it is not for too great severity in refusing, but for too great facility in granting, these certificates. Flagrant indeed must be the misconduct, and repeated the offences of a student, before the authorities of his college can be brought to refuse him his testimonials; for in so doing, they deliberately bar him out for ever from the clerical profession, and thus ruin, in many cases, his prospects for life. So severe a punishment is not inflicted but under the compulsion of an irresistible conviction of its necessity. Yet this sentence was passed by the authorities of Oriel College, Oxford, upon a son of Bishop Philpotts; and notwithstanding this sentence, and in violation of his own regulations making college testimonials indispensable for ordination, the Bishop proceeded at once to ordain this disqualified candidate, and to promote him to ecclesiastical preferment. He afterwards justified his conduct by the startling axiom that a father is the best judge of his son's repentance; a proposition to which we might demur, by pleading a maxim of more general acceptation, which affirms that parents are apt to be partial.' Such is the method of our modern Athanasius for guarding the moral purity of the clerical order! Such is the practical meaning of those lofty words in which he so often exalts the sanctity of the sacerdotal office, and impresses on our minds the awful responsibilities of the transmitter of Apostolical Succession! Many more illustrations* might be given of this branch of our An amusing history might be given of the Bishop's transactions with respect to the living of Hallow alone. How he bartered a stall 1852. His Love of Notoriety. 85 subject, but we fear to exhaust the patience of our readers; and made 6 6 This thirst for notoriety determined the ecclesiastical politics of Bishop Philpotts from the first. It was absolutely necessary to his happiness to make himself a party leader, and there was but one party which would follow his lead. Yet this was the very party which he had, to all appearance, irrevocably alienated, when he ascended the Episcopal throne, by kicking down the ladder on which he had mounted. Nor is it a trifling proof of in his cathedral (which his son was disqualified from holding) against this wealthy rectory; how he attempted to jockey the Bishop of Worcester (we use the term advisedly) out of another presentation to the same living for another son; how he revenged himself for being defeated in this attempt by a ferocious onslaught on his brother prelate in his charge of 1845: all this is sadly notorious, yet, up to the present time, caret vate sacro. But our limits compel us to omit further notice of it; and, besides, we had rather leave the Bishop of Worcester (who tells the story so well) to publish its de tails. his adroitness, that he should so soon have succeeded in reconciling himself with so many of those whom he had abandoned, and (as they said) betrayed. But he understood the materials on which he had to work; he was practised of old in flattering clerical prejudices, in fanning the flames of theological strife, in raising the storm of bigotry, and lashing into fury the waves of the ecclesiastical tempest, while he calmly fished in the troubled waters. Il connaissait bien ses gens.' Thus he was soon once more the public champion of the High-Church faction; the parliamentary spokesman of intolerance. But parliamentary prominence was not enough. A bishop has too few opportunities of display; the atmosphere of the House of Lords is too serene for agitators, and his style is better suited to pamphlets than orations; consequently his parliamentary efforts have been few and far between, compared with the incessant manifestations of his activity out of doors. Happily there is no need for us in this, as in the former cases, to exemplify our topic by tedious details which belong to the administration of a remote diocese, and have little interest beyond its precincts. The memory of every reader will recall more illustrations than our space permits us even to allude to. The marvellous feats of Bishop Philpotts have been so long a part of the polemical varieties of our newspaper, that we look for them as regularly as for the Irish horror, or the railway accident. One week he is fulminating his denunciation against the Heads of the Church for founding a bishopric at Jerusalem; the next, he is inveighing against Scripture Readers, after all the rest of the Bench have sanctioned their employment. Now he is inditing a philippic against Lord John Russell; now imprisoning Shore; now convulsing his diocese by the command to preach in surplices; now pursuing Gorham through all the courts of law; now astounding the churchwardens of Brampford Speke; now exterminating Bishop Hampden; now reviling Archdeacon Sinclair; now convoking a Synod; now excommunicating an Archbishop. And, if we turn from the public intelligence of our newspaper to its legal columns, there also we find this indefatigable Bishop, with the never-failing adjunct versùs' either before or after his name. The Bishop of Exeter versùs Smith,'- • Edwards versus the Bishop of Exeter;'- The Bishop of Exeter versùs "Gorham,'- Gorham versus the Bishop of Exeter;'-' The Queen on the Prosecution of the Bishop of Exeter versùs Latimer;' such are the notices continually meeting our eyes, which are said to have made an eminent foreigner innocently inquire whether versus' were a part of the Episcopal title in England generally, or attached to the See of Exeter in particular. 1852. His Vituperation of Opponents. 87 These innumerable lawsuits originate (it may be said) in the love of power or pelf; yet, surely, disinterested love of notoriety must also have a large share in their production, considering how often they terminate in failure and disgrace. The Bishop rises like Antæus after every fall, invigorated by his defeat, courting another adverse judgment, a heavier bill of costs, or a more damaging verdict. He belongs to the class of sportsmen with whom the excitement of the chase amply repays its perils. A public reputation, of whatever kind, seems the object sought, as it undoubtedly is the end attained. But we hasten from considering the ends contemplated by Bishop Philpotts to examine the means by which he has effected them. The first and most characteristic of these means is the unsparing use of vituperation. The weekly organ of his party (the Guardian' newspaper) boasted lately, that a man must be 'endowed with singular courage who can see his own name standing on a title-page of one of the Bishop of Exeter's 'pamphlets, as a subject for the animadversion of the Bishop, without at least a passing emotion of apprehension.' And we believe the boast not to be unfounded; for it is unquestionably disagreeable to be abused, calumniated, and spat upon. The llama of Peru is a very formidable antagonist; and we can easily suppose that many of his more timid opponents shrink from the risk of drawing on themselves the demonstration of his hostility. In fact, it requires something of the robur et æs triplex, which is supposed to shield the breast of our critical brotherhood, to encounter the peril. The style of the Bishop's rhetoric can only be appreciated by actual examples. And here we are somewhat embarrassed in our selection, not from the want of materials, but from their profusion. A crowd of striking passages might be extracted from his early political pamphlets, from his assaults on Canning, from his several letters to Lord John Russell (apparently a very favourite correspondent), from his denunciations of Hampden, of Gorham, of the Bishop of Worcester, and hundreds more who have fallen under his lash. But, since we must necessarily confine ourselves to a more sparing selection, we shall content ourselves with extracts from his most recent writings. And we have this rule to guide us in our choice, that the style of Bishop Philpotts rises with the dignity of his opponent. Thus he is contumelious† to an archdeacon, insolent to a premier, * 'Guardian' of October 1. 1851. † So the Archdeacon of Middlesex complains of the 'contumelious epithets' of the Bishop of Exeter. (Charge, 2nd ed. p. 6.) |