Henry Alford Dean of Canterbury (1857-71) and the Victorian Church of England

247 HENRY ALFORD, DEAN OF CANTERBURY (1857-71), AND THE VICTORIAN CHURCH OF ENGLAND brian m. hogben The Victorian era can be seen as one of vigorous Christian piety – sometimes issuing in controversy – but also of growing religious doubt. Cherished beliefs were challenged by new scientific theories, by textual and historical study of the Bible, and by the ideas of prominent philosophers; all of these influences reaching a wide audience through better popular education. Evolutionary theory, for example, by undermining the biblical account of the Fall, also called into question the meaning of the work of Christ. ‘It would be truer to say’, wrote the theologian Alec Vidler, ‘that the age was one of religious seriousness than of faith’.1 ‘The Christian church taught what was not true’.2 As Owen Chadwick pointed out, this basic problem affected individuals in many different ways. Some scientists were unbelievers before the Darwinian revolution, for ethical or other non-scientific reasons. Conversely, Christians began to find ways of reconciling evolution with belief. As is well known, in 1897 Frederick Temple, who accepted evolutionary theory, was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. The absorption of new ideas can usefully be traced in individual lives, not least those of leading churchmen. The liberal clergy of the Victorian Church have perhaps been accorded less attention than they deserve. F.D. Maurice, Benjamin Jowett and a few others have retained their reputations, but some prominent figures have been eclipsed. The enduring influence of the Oxford Movement has tended to overshadow other elements in the Church of England: the Evangelicals, resurgent for a time in mid-century; pragmatic moderates like Archbishop Tait; and the liberal ‘Broad Churchmen’, whose views made steady progress, somewhat against their own anxious expectations. Despite the uproar over ‘Essays and Reviews’ (1860), new developments in biblical scholarship and in scientific understanding were gradually taken on board. Frederick Temple himself had been a contributor to ‘Essays and Reviews’. One of the most influential advocates of the liberal cause was Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury from 1857 until his death in 1871. Though a traditionalist BRIAN M. HOGBEN 248 in his love of cathedral worship and church music, in some respects this unusual Dean was a radical even by the standards of the twenty-first century. Alford was an active Dean, carrying out substantial, though controversial, restoration work and engaging with the local community and the diocese in a variety of ways. In 1866 and 1868 he organised missions in the poorer parts of Canterbury, enlisting Archbishop Longley in the work on the latter occasion. At the end of his life he was busy in charitable work. It is for his contribution to the wider Church, however, that he most deserves to be remembered – and to be recognised as a significant liberal. His editorial work, his biblical scholarship, his indefatigable preaching all over the country, and his ecumenical activities all seem to have been rooted in an urgent desire to be of service to those in spiritual or other need. An obituary in the Spectator honoured him as an outstanding teacher: The Dean was...a man of great common-sense, of wide and liberal mind, of a good deal of practical energy, hard-working, genial, earnest, and one of the foremost men of the party of comprehension...Dean Alford was a great popularizer, and very few indeed of our dignitaries thought so much of the people, and worked so hard to teach them. He was one of that class – too few in the English Church – who really understood that unless the Church got a thorough hold of the common people, it has no right to the name of a National Church...He was not the traditional English Dean at all; but if the Church ever becomes a really popular institution, there will be a great many Deans of the type of Dean Alford.3 When Alexander Strahan decided to found the Contemporary Review, he chose Henry Alford as his editor on the basis that he was ‘the most liberalminded Churchman in England’.4 In 1866, when the journal began, this may have seemed an exaggeration, since Alford had distanced himself from the Essayists. Yet it was a prescient view. Limited in circulation though the Contemporary Review was, by its intellectual weight and its wide coverage – including science and the arts – it enhanced the credibility of the Broad Church tendency. Alford’s own contributions, which will be discussed in detail later, were at times startling. Henry Alford’s early life, and the influences upon him, are portrayed in the Life and Letters compiled by his widow.5 Four months after his birth in 1810 his mother died. Henry did not at first remain with his distraught father, but rejoined him at the age of three. A devout Evangelical, in the intervening period his father took holy orders and became a country curate. In this role he did his best in the face of poor health. The young Henry was a serious child, and when only eleven wrote a collection of hymns. This was followed by other pieces of verse and prose. A keen letter-writer, he marked the Confirmation in 1825 of his cousin Frances (always known as Fanny, later to be his wife) with an epistle setting out HENRY ALFORD, DEAN OF CANTERBURY, AND THE VICTORIAN CHURCH 249 his twelve maxims for his own good behaviour.6 The following year saw Henry’s own Confirmation, and the inception of his personal journal, a characteristic Evangelical device. After a year’s preparatory study, during which he lived with the staunchly Evangelical Bickersteth family, in 1828 he arrived at Trinity College, Cambridge, as an undergraduate. Attending college chapel morning and evening, he also read three chapters of the Bible and a psalm every day, and went to hear the sermons of Charles Simeon, whom he admired. Student life could be challenging, however: in November 1829 he commented in a letter to Fanny that he was ‘surrounded with professors of religion, who are, many of them neither moral nor religious’.7 Devout and introspective though he was, he was open to intellectual stimuli and to new friendships. A turning-point came in the following year when he was elected to membership of the ‘Apostles’, the well-known group, twelve in number, that was formed for free-ranging discussion and included such young luminaries as F.D. Maurice, Tennyson, and Arthur Hallam. According to Fanny Alford, they met weekly and lived ‘at other times in habits of close intimacy’.8 Connop Thirlwall, a pioneer of German biblical scholarship in England, was an honorary member. By 1833 Henry was reading Thomas à Kempis and referring to ‘the great and holy Dante’.9 After Cambridge and ordination, in 1835 Henry Alford married Fanny and began his ecclesiastical career as Vicar of Wymeswold in Leicestershire. There he wrote poetry, which found a publisher, and also began the scholarly work which was to be so important in his life. Invited to deliver the Hulsean Lectures at Cambridge in 1841-2, he selected as his subject Old Testament prophecies of the Incarnation. In 1833, of course, John Keble had preached the sermon on church-state relations that came to be seen as the dawn of the Oxford Movement. Anyone wishing to simplify the religious divisions of the period has to contend with Alford’s membership of the Cambridge Camden Society and his extensive restoration of Wymeswold church (1844-6). His chosen architect was none other than Augustus Welby Pugin, who had become a Roman Catholic in 1835.10 Pugin received very few commissions from the Church of England, and this was arguably the most important apart from St Lawrence, Tubney (Oxon., an entirely new church). His elaborate scheme, which involved the loss of some medieval work, encompassed roofs, porches, windows, screen, pulpit, font and lectern. A letter survives from Alford to Pugin, dated 1 January 1846, in which he gives his opinions of various windows.11 Had Pugin lived, what might he have done for Alford at Canterbury? The completion of the restoration coincided with the defection to Rome of one of Alford’s own pupils. Embarrassed, he observed in a letter to a friend: ‘That I have given the Roman Catholics too much external encouragement for the times to bear has been the effect of a liberality which those who blame me for it have BRIAN M. HOGBEN 250 always been the first to recommend … I have not altered, but the times have ...’.12 Writing to another clergyman two years later, when seeking a new curate for Wymeswold, he declared: ‘I want him to preach and teach Jesus Christ, and not the Church; and to be fully prepared to recognize the pious Dissenter as a brother in Christ, and as much a member of the Church as ourselves’.13 The year 1849 saw the publication of the first volume of Alford’s annotated Greek Testament. Though controversial at first, this project as a whole would earn him an honoured place in the annals of biblical studies in England. His critics, however, accused him of going too far towards adopting the critical and historical approach pioneered by German scholars, and highlighted his denial of the apostolic succession of bishops and the power of the clergy to remit sins. At the same time, the Tractarians were embarrassed when in 1850 the Pope created a network of Roman Catholic dioceses in England. Alford commented: ‘The High Churchmen have certainly done service in their day, but their proceedings have not been wise, and I am not sorry they should have a check’.14 In 1853 Alford was appointed minister of Quebec Chapel in London, close to Oxford Street. The terms of his appointment to this proprietary chapel left him free to continue his research in the mornings. As well as preaching regular Sunday morning sermons, chiefly on the Christian life, after a while he introduced a weekly Sunday afternoon lecture in which he used his Greek Testament notes to expound the Gospels. A seven-volume series of his Quebec Chapel Sermons was published. Margaret Maddox, in her distinguished thesis, observed that ‘without repudiating Evangelical doctrine, he tempered it by stressing the love of God’.15 A painstaking and well-informed student of his life and writings, she also concluded that at this time he ‘moved … into the precincts of the Broad-Church school of thought’.16 On a practical level he encouraged his fashionable morning congregation to engage in social work among the poor of the district, for whose spiritual needs he began an evening service. In a letter written in October 1854 he averred: ‘We really have some very nice people here, people amongst whom I think real good may be done by quietly pushing on the real thing, the root and ground of the matter, keeping clear of all party names and phrases’.17 In 1856 an Evangelical newspaper called him ‘unfit to remain in the Church of England’ after he published a pamphlet in favour of the Sunday opening of the Crystal Palace and of London galleries. Alford counter-attacked strongly in a second pamphlet.18 Offered the Deanery of Canterbury in March 1857 by Lord Palmerston, Henry Alford gladly accepted. Historians have remarked upon Palmerston’s approach to ecclesiastical appointments. In choosing bishops and deans he generally avoided High Churchmen – not just because of his Anglo- Irish Protestant origins, but to keep the peace. Lord Shaftesbury was also an influence, and he made known his views on Alford. While suggesting HENRY ALFORD, DEAN OF CANTERBURY, AND THE VICTORIAN CHURCH 251 some Evangelical names for Canterbury, in the light of Palmerston’s known intentions he wrote to him that, supposing he were to ‘enter on a new line and name one of the Broad Church’, Alford was ‘a deep Greek scholar, fit to be a Dean and very unfit to be a Bishop’.19 He refrained from reminding the Prime Minister of this deep scholar’s Evangelical roots. A well-known letter of Palmerston’s to Charles Wood, Secretary of State for India, may also be quoted here: The High Churchmen are few in number and are found chiefly in the higher classes...The Dignitaries of the Church who are of the High Church Party are verging towards Papacy, and are in constant antagonism with their Low Church Brethren and with all the Dissenters.20 Once in Canterbury, Alford wrote optimistically: ‘ … now, please God, I can finish my Greek Testament with much more leisure and comfort’.21 The great work was indeed completed by 1860, but the Dean was finding little leisure. He travelled all over the country to preach, while his formal duties included membership of the Ecclesiastical Commission and a significant role in Convocation, where the Dean of Canterbury ranked second only to the Prolocutor. He disliked the climate of Canterbury, and suffered bouts of ill-health, which were alleviated by trips to the Continent. On 31 December 1862 he wrote, presciently: ‘I have worked harder than most men, and must in the course of nature go sooner’.22 As for the hope of a bishopric, in September he had observed: ‘I am too outspoken, and too little leaning to any party for them to take me’.23 Between November 1863 and June 1864 he took an extended break, travelling to Rome and elsewhere. It was at this time that Alford reconsidered his strong opposition to Essays and Reviews, which he had expressed in a note added to a new edition of his Greek Testament published in 1863. He had been anxious not to have his work identified with the reflections of the most radical Essayists, or with J.W. Colenso’s recent book on the Pentateuch, which he also criticised. When, however, Dean Stanley (who had briefly been a colleague at Canterbury) petitioned Convocation in 1864 in defence of the Essayists, Alford supported him. Much of the Dean’s attention was devoted at various times to matters musical. While music was only one of his many interests, its place in his work is worth examining, especially as his roots were in a tradition which is sometimes thought to have been inimical to musical development. The quality of the music at Canterbury seems to have been relatively high throughout most of the nineteenth century.24 Nevertheless, there were the kind of problems which also arose elsewhere. As is well known, the transfer of capitular property to the Ecclesiastical Commission in return for a regular income created financial difficulties. There were also disputes with the minor canons, who sang the offices but derived most of their income from parish appointments. The boys were a recurrent problem, BRIAN M. HOGBEN 252 and in 1865 there was a proposal to incorporate them into the King’s School or else the Blue Coat School. At about the same time, Alford became embroiled in an acrimonious dispute with the Rev’d Edward Fellows, Grammar Master of the Choristers, who was dismissed and subsequently published their correspondence.25 Points at issue included Fellows’ teaching duties and the attitude of the Precentor. By statute the latter was responsible for the actual training of the choir, an unusual and inhibiting arrangement which persisted into the twentieth century, by which time a number of other cathedrals had temporarily surpassed the musical standards of Canterbury. There was also much discussion of the pay and pensions of the lay clerks. In 1879, William Longhurst would complain that as Organist he was paid only £115 plus an annual gratuity of £25 and £30 as music master (to the boys); his tied house was damp, cold and cramped. Alford himself had a ‘sweet and musical barytone voice’,26 and as long ago as 1844 had published a hymn book entitled Psalms and Hymns. He had an organ installed at Wymeswold and trained a choir. (At Quebec Chapel, however, he disbanded the professional choir which he inherited.) In order to foster congregational singing at Canterbury he produced (in collaboration with Robert Hake, Precentor and a close friend) a more ambitious book, The Year of Praise, some of the words and music being his own. His best-known hymn is probably the harvest favourite, ‘Come, ye thankful people, come’. Others which became popular included ‘Ten thousand times ten thousand’ and the baptismal hymn, ‘In token that thou shalt not fear’. The book as a whole, however, seems to have been let down by its tunes, and Dean Payne Smith replaced it with Hymns Ancient and Modern. In 1862 Alford founded the Canterbury Diocesan Union of Parochial Choirs, which held an annual festival, an event that continues under a different banner to this day; and three years later he helped to start, and became a member of, a choral society known as the Canterbury Harmonic Union. In choral services he favoured the intoning of the office and the singing of the psalms, policies that were still somewhat controversial, and would lend his own voice in anthems and settings as well. Though a man of serious demeanour, accentuated by his outsize beard, he would sometimes join with the choristers in musical entertainments. Even at the end of his life we find him rehearsing Christmas charades with Hake and the boys. In January 1861 they had, more ambitiously, performed ‘The Seasons: a masque’, with the Dean, its author and composer, as Father Christmas.27 Thomas Evance Jones, the Organist, was now quite elderly, though Longhurst was an able assistant, with a knowledge of organ building. According to Woodruff, he was less effective in tutoring the boys.28 However the conducting of the choir was performed competently by Hake. An increase in the number of probationers to 10 in 1865 was clearly a step forward, as was the relocation of the school to a former brewhouse HENRY ALFORD, DEAN OF CANTERBURY, AND THE VICTORIAN CHURCH 253 on the north side of the Green Court. The prolonged discussions over chorister education had not been in vain: the newly-restored building was much more spacious than the upper floor of the Cheker, its previous home. Alford’s views on music were expressed at some length in the second of two sermons preached on the occasion of the death of Prince Albert.29 Despite his many commitments, when Alexander Strahan’s call came Alford seems not to have hesitated. The young Scots publisher had moved his business to London in 1862. Alford became a regular contributor to two of his journals, Home Words and The Sunday Magazine, both of which enjoyed a wide readership. The two men, who held similar views on many subjects, seem to have become friends, and to have considered together the idea of a learned monthly, one that would address the issues of the day from a liberal Christian standpoint. In January 1866 the Contemporary Review was born, and it soon came to reflect its editor’s wide interests: Biblical criticism, philosophy, science, art, music, poetry, travel. In December of that year he wrote: ‘ ... if I were to mention the very busiest period of my busy life I should name the last two months’.30 Each issue of the Contemporary consisted of some 160 pages. During Alford’s editorship there were 158 different named contributors, of whom 14 wrote a total of 90 signed articles.31 He himself is believed to have written 28 articles and many short reviews. While he did not himself enter the debate on evolution, in December 1868 he published a substantial article by F.W. Farrar, a future Dean of Canterbury, on ‘The attitude of the clergy towards science’. Alford’s first contribution, in the initial issue, was a review of Education and School by E. Thring. This was followed in March by a survey of ‘Church hymn-books’. Welcoming the recent upsurge in their number, he accorded his highest praise to Hymns Ancient and Modern, despite its High Church emphasis. Lurid imagery he deplored, and he noted that some ancient hymns could not be translated congenially into English. Later in the same year he penned a critique of some essays by Anthony Trollope in which the novelist had cast aspersions on the state of the church’s hierarchy and of the clergy in general. In the same volume he reviewed four collections of Nonconformist sermons. As on other occasions, he argued for a fraternal approach by the Church of England: ‘The authors of such sermons as we have now been reviewing are not men whom any portion of a Christian society ought to allow itself to treat with neglect’.32 Alford’s next article (strictly speaking a review) was more substantial, a treatment of ‘Cathedral life and cathedral reform’.33 He began by responding to criticism in some building journals of the restoration work in progress at Canterbury. Moving on, he gave details of his Cathedral’s establishment, including 6 residentiary canons, 4 minor canons, 12 lay clerks, 10 choristers, 10 probationers, and 50 King’s Scholars (out of a total of some 150 pupils). The importance he attached to the King’s BRIAN M. HOGBEN 254 School was shown in his referring to the recent expenditure of £10,000 on new buildings, and the purchase of an adjoining house. One of the most vital tasks of a cathedral was fine worship: ‘ … of all safeguards against exaggerated ritual, our cathedrals are the strongest’. The music should be neither Gregorian nor fully congregational. The choristers should not be boarders (his views on this fluctuated) but should nevertheless have their own school. The minor canons should be abolished, but there ought to be specialist ‘musical canons’, paid half as much as the residentiaries. He was not in favour of the latter having new external duties. Significant articles by Alford in the following year included a review of recent Anglican sermons; a thorough critique of Short Studies on Great Subjects by J.A. Froude, under the title, ‘The gospels and modern criticism’; and a review of a biography of Jean-Baptiste-Marie Vianney, the saintly Curé d’Ars. In discussing the gospels he used recent German scholarship. He declined to approve or condemn the famous Curé’s involvement in a ‘system’ (the Roman Catholic Church) but praised his ‘noble example’ as a parish priest.34 Alford next turned his attention to ‘The union of Christendom in its home aspect’.35 Roman Catholics were, as he (and many of his contemporaries) saw it, a special case because of their foreign connections and their own apparent exclusiveness. Otherwise British Christendom should be as big a tent as possible, covering ‘all who profess and call themselves Christians’, including Unitarians. After all, the Church of England itself sheltered a huge variety of beliefs. He favoured not only the occasional licensed opening-up of pulpits but, dramatically, a symbolic act of unity in the form of a non-liturgical celebration of Holy Communion. Later in the same year, Alford contributed a bold and wide-ranging article on ‘The church of the future’.36 Disestablishment of the Church of England was, in his view, inevitable. No-one should be blamed for advocating it, since it would be the natural conclusion of the removal of legal constraints upon members of other churches; it need not make the state less Christian. Optimistically he thought not only that the practical difficulties could be overcome but that the parish system need not change in appearance. In linking the subject to that of church reform, he now launched a heavy assault upon the cathedrals, ‘the least satisfactory part of our present Church system’, offering ‘posts of dignified repose’.37 He averred that he ‘must with pain confess that eleven years’ experience has not removed, but has rather strengthened, the impression of former days, that the present influence, as a whole, of a great Cathedral in a town, is rather for evil than for good’. Doubting the need for chapters, he suggested that a cathedral might be run by the diocesan bishop through the agency of a rector. Alford’s next contribution, ‘Principles at stake’,38 was a review of a collection entitled Essays on Church Questions of the Day. In this he HENRY ALFORD, DEAN OF CANTERBURY, AND THE VICTORIAN CHURCH 255 vehemently endorsed the authors’ challenge to Ritualism, which he carefully distinguished from the teachings of the Tractarians. He also advocated the removal of the bishops from the House of Lords, and called the first Lambeth Conference ‘irregular and unauthoritative’. (Nor did the Evangelical party in the Church escape his strictures.) Soon afterwards, he wrote with alarm in ‘The next step’39 of the conduct of a Ritualist faction at a meeting of the SPCK. In ‘Cathedral reform’40 he enlarged upon his views on this controversial topic. Cathedrals were necessary as mother churches, exemplars of worship, and sources of preaching and teaching. Chapters were not essential, however. Rather than finding diocesan work for them, they should be abolished except for the deans (who currently had weak powers and few formal duties) and archdeacons. Between them they could run the cathedral with the help of some clergy of the diocese. In this way, £4,000 per annum could be saved at Canterbury alone. This particular money could be spent on a boarding house for the choristers, on helping poor parishes in Canterbury, and even on the work of the Ecclesiastical Commission. A subsequent issue contained ‘Cathedral reform – a supplement’,41 in which Alford replied to criticism of his views in The Times and elsewhere, appending some Latin verses purportedly describing his exchanges of views at that juncture with the Chapter. Following a meeting of Deans with Archbishop Tait, both Archbishops had written to all the Deans asking for their observations, and if possible ‘views of your brethren of the chapter’, on the future of cathedrals. Alford had replied without discussing the subject with his Canterbury colleagues. Now they were expressing discontent. The work of the Cathedral had continued in parallel with the Dean’s journalism, and in March 1870 he relinquished the editorial chair. Relations with the Chapter had often been uneasy. His innovation of afternoon sermons had been sanctioned only on a temporary basis, and if he was unable to appear at that time he was obliged to find a preacher elsewhere, or to call upon his loyal Precentor. That Alford made an impact on Canterbury can be seen not only in musical matters, but in the growing congregations he drew, and in the restoration work which he carried through. In this he enjoyed the support of the Ecclesiastical Commission, and himself acted as treasurer of a new fabric fund. In the light of Alford’s earlier association with Pugin, who died in 1852, it is ironic that the restoration was directed by the Commissioners’ architect, the Evangelical Ewan Christian. (The report of Christian’s initial survey, and the accounts for the subsequent work, can be found in the Fabric documents in the Cathedral Archives.) Some of the work was controversial, as it was felt that he was too radical in, for example, his renewal of the west front. The roofs of the quire and eastern transepts were restored, as were the stair-tower of St Anselm’s Chapel, the east BRIAN M. HOGBEN 256 walk of the cloisters, the interior of St Andrew’s Chapel, the south-west porch, and a number of windows. New developments included the Dean’s Steps, the Mint Yard gate, and an imposing Library building. The Dean had hoped that, once vacated by the choristers, the medieval Cheker or counting-house might serve as library accommodation, but this idea proved impractical. The heating of the Cathedral by hot water pipes began in 1871. An earlier innovation, the lighting of the Precincts by gas, was more problematical, in that the gas works positioned opposite the west front in 1862 was a source of considerable harm to the fabric. The statues by Theodore Pfyffers which were added to the west front also aroused debate. Financed at £24 each by subscription, they were considered somewhat bland. Of the memorial statue of Alford, unveiled by Hake, it was written: ‘It is very unfortunate that this statue, although a good piece of sculpture, conveys a most inaccurate idea of the still well remembered countenance and bearing of the eminent divine it is intended to represent’.42 Alford’s demolitions have been questioned too. As well as the Cheker, the houses which occupied the site of the Infirmary were taken down. If he was reluctant to preserve disused buildings, it was probably because of the decline in the Cathedral’s income.43 A plan prepared in 1859 by Gilbert Scott for the ‘completion’ of the Corona was rejected. In 1869 Alford published Essays and Addresses on Church Subjects, in which a number of his controversial utterances were brought together.44 His preface strongly criticised ‘modern High Churchmanship’. At about the same time he became a founder member of the Metaphysical Society, a group of distinguished men of widely differing views whose discussions must have evoked memories of the Cambridge Apostles. Other members ranged from T.H. Huxley to the Roman Catholic former Tractarian W.G. Ward. Despite his wide sympathies, Alford could not avoid taking sides in the prevailing disputes within the Church of England. In Convocation in February 186845 he spoke against the stronger enforcement of the rules against ritual: ‘Let these things produce their natural effect. I have no fear as to the issue; I am not afraid that Romanism will prevail … We owe an immense debt to the movement of which this is a continuance – the Oxford movement of thirty years ago: we may reap similar benefits from this movement’. In February 1870, on the other hand, he declined to play a part in a Church Congress on the grounds that at a previous one, in 1865, ‘every word spoken by those with whom my views agree, or to whose views mine approach, was rudely hooted down by a determined clique of [Ritualist] opponents’. In any case, he said, he was too busy, having just embarked upon ‘a Biblical work’.46 His resignation from the Contemporary followed soon afterwards. This new task, which Alford thought would occupy much of his time, was his membership of a committee appointed to produce a new English HENRY ALFORD, DEAN OF CANTERBURY, AND THE VICTORIAN CHURCH 257 translation of the Bible. At the end of the year he also became involved in the creation of a society for the relief of poverty in Canterbury, going out on cold nights to chair meetings. Later known as the Alford Aid Society, this survived well into the second half of the twentieth century. At various times its work included assistance to the families of sick children and the provision of an ‘open air nursery’ at St Martin’s Hill.47 Latterly its focus was on financial advice and help, 502 cases being dealt with in 1960.48 It was the Dean’s last project; he would not see the Revised Version of the Bible published. Weakened by fatigue, in January 1871, after a short and apparently mild illness, Henry Alford died at Canterbury. His distinctive contribution to the life and thought of the Church of England was summed up in the Contemporary by Dean Stanley, in these words: He was a scholar in the sense of constantly learning. Few ecclesiastical writers of our time have gone more steadily forward in a wider appreciation of Christian truth.49 endnotes 1 Alec R. Vidler, The Church in an Age of Revolution (Harmondsworth, 1961 rev. 1974), 113. 2 Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part II (2nd. ed., London, 1972), 2. 3 Quoted in Margaret Maddox, Henry Alford and the Contemporary Review (Ph.D. thesis, University of Chicago, 1950), 95. 4 Ibid., 94. 5 F. Alford (ed.), Life, Journal and Letters of Henry Alford, D.D., late Dean of Canterbury (London, 1873). Henry Alford was born in London, near Bedford Square. 6 Ibid., 12. 7 Ibid., 49. 8 Ibid., note to p. 61. 9 Ibid., 86. 10 Ibid., 141; also Henry Alford, A History and Description of the Restored Parish Church of St. Mary, Wymeswold, Leicestershire (London, 1844). 11 Margaret Butcher (ed.), The Collected Letters of A.W.N. Pugin, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 2003), 453, note 2. 12 F. Alford (ed.), op. cit., 150. 13 Ibid., 170. 14 Ibid., 203. 15 Maddox, op. cit., 49. 16 Ibid., 60. 17 Ditto. 18 Henry Alford, Two Letters to John Sperling, Esq., on the Lord’s Day (London, 1856). 19 Quoted from the Shaftesbury (Broadlands) MSS in: Geoffrey B.A.M. Finlayson, The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, 1801-1885 (London, 1981), 382. 20 Quoted in: Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (London, 1970), 500. 21 F. Alford (ed.), op. cit., 270. 22 Ibid., 358. BRIAN M. HOGBEN 258 23 Ibid., 356. 24 Canterbury was praised in: John Jebb, The Choral Service of the United Church of England and Ireland (London, 1843), 124. 25 Edward Fellows, Correspondence between the Very Rev. Henry Alford … and the Rev. Edward Fellows ... (London, 1865). 26 F. Alford (ed.), op. cit., 508. 27 Ibid., 302. 28 C.E. Woodruff, ‘Reminiscences of the cathedral and its personnel seventy-five years ago’ in: Canterbury Cathedral Chronicle, 39 (1943), 21. 29 Henry Alford, Mourning and Praise: two sermons preached in Canterbury Cathedral (London, 1862). 30 F. Alford (ed.), op. cit., 386. 31 Maddox, op. cit., 101. 32 The Contemporary Review, ii, 1866, 338-56. 33 Ibid., 488-513. 34 Cont, Rev., iv, 1867. 35 Cont. Rev., vii, 1868, 161-173. 36 Cont. Rev., ix, 1868, 161-178. 37 Ibid., 175. 38 Ibid., 321-341. 39 Ibid., 481-501. 40 Cont. Rev., xii, 1869, 38-49. 41 Ibid., 360-369. 42 G. Smith, Chronological History of Canterbury Cathedral (Canterbury, 1883), 368. 43 M. Sparks, Canterbury Cathedral Precincts; a historical survey (Canterbury, 2007), 91. 44 Henry Alford, Essays and Addresses on Church Subjects (London, 1869). 45 Chronicle of Convocation, 21 February 1868. 46 Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library, U442. 47 Ditto, CCA-CC-A/SC/241/1. 48 Kent Messenger, November 18 1960. 49 F. Alford (ed.), op. cit., 493.