Historical context

This pamphlet was published on 17 June 1856 by Edmund Greenfield of Barnhall House, Staplefield. Greenfield was about 74 years old and appears to have been a leading local Nonconformist. He had been minister of Providence Chapel, the Independent or Congregational chapel established at Staplefield in 1821.

It is addressed to the Reverend Thomas Astley Maberly, Vicar of Cuckfield from 1841 until 1877. At that time Staplefield was still closely connected with the large ecclesiastical parish of Cuckfield. St Mark’s Church had been built there in 1847–48, partly to serve local Anglicans who lived some distance from Holy Trinity.

The letter belongs to a bitter mid-Victorian religious controversy within the Church of England. The Oxford Movement—often called “Puseyism” after the theologian Edward Bouverie Pusey—was restoring older forms of worship, church decoration and sacramental ceremony. Candles, crosses, flowers, decorated chancels and more formal services were welcomed by some Anglicans but denounced by many evangelical Protestants as a return to Roman Catholicism.

In 1855 Maberly also commissioned major alterations to Holy Trinity, including a raised chancel, marble steps, choir stalls and a new reredos. Greenfield evidently regarded the same ceremonial tendency at St Mark’s as “half papistical”.

His letter is therefore not a calm theological argument. It is an angry public attack on Maberly and his curates. Greenfield accuses them of:

• bringing Roman Catholic-style objects and practices into local churches;

• suggesting that Nonconformists could not be saved;

• distributing tracts attacking Dissenting ministers;

• trying to persuade Staplefield residents to abandon Providence Chapel;

• dividing a community in which Anglicans and Nonconformists had previously lived amicably.

  
  

St Mark’s was indeed built in 1848, while contemporary records confirm Maberly’s incumbency and the presence of established Independent worship in Staplefield. St Mark’s Church history, 1851 Cuckfield directory, Cuckfield vicars.

Full transcription

A LETTER

FROM A

FAITHFUL PROTESTANT WITNESS,

(BY THE GRACE OF GOD)

TO THE

REV. T. A. MABERLY,

VICAR OF CUCKFIELD, SUSSEX.

JUNE 17, 1856.

LONDON:

E. PALMER AND SON, 18, PATERNOSTER ROW.

1856.

Pages 2–4

A LETTER.

REVEREND SIR,

I am constrained to address you, as an old inhabitant of Cuckfield for nearly half a century, in feelings of grief mingled with joy. First, in grief, that you, the Vicar, having subscribed to the Articles of the Protestant Episcopal Church of England, and living amongst pious, loyal, Protestants of the National Protestant Church, and Protestant Dissenters, whose origin, by the will and power of God, was from Eldad and Medad, in union with Moses and Aaron (see Num. xi. 24–29), to be in union nationally and individually unto the end of the world. See the proofs from Numb. to Matt. xxviii. 19, 20, to Rev. xxii. 14–21.

It is indeed a grief to me, and all true Christians in the parish of Cuckfield, and the adjoining parishes, that you allow Puseyite, or half papistical foretold “abomination of desolation,” to be set up in the parish of Cuckfield, and the new Church of St. Mark’s, in the Hamlet of Staplefield, namely flaming candles and crosses of wood, at certain times decorated with flowers, to stand between the ministers, and the congregation, and God.

That is, Sir, most awful idolatry, in praying and singing in churches, yes, as bad as the Popish mass! whilst, by the will of God, and the civil and ecclesiastical laws of God, and by the laws of England, you have in your churches the Ten Commandments set before you and the people, which forbid all idols and idolatry. Never, Sir, was the “abomination of desolation” foretold “standing in the holy place,” (see Matt. xxiv. 15.) that is, in the place of protestant preaching, and worship of God, in the Parish Church of Cuckfield, until you became Vicar.

Neither did any Curate of your predecessors, the godly Vicars of Cuckfield, ever venture to speak blasphemy, as your present Curates do, by declaring that no Dissenters from the profession of your Church, can be saved; And moreover that restless discord-sower, the Curate of St. Mark’s, after defaming me, before many witnesses, going from house to house, labouring to turn away people, and my hearers from the faith (but all in vain), he got a tract, and many tracts, from the Puseyite forge in London, Ave-Maria Lane, and galloped his horse through the Hamlet, and part of the parish, circulating them in “all deceivableness of unrighteousness” as foretold in Paul’s second epistle to the Thess. ii. 10, not only labouring to seduce honest old Church of England peoples from their articles and faith in God, and to disunite them from honest Dissenters,

falsely condemning all Protestant Dissenting Ministers and Pastors, making the tract his own, which tract is open before me on my writing-table, with the following sentence:—“For no dissenting preachers are true ministers of Christ.”—In page 9 of the tract entitled ‘Church Matters.’ Thus your Curate of St. Mark’s, in this Hamlet of Staplefield, in which the writer Edmund Greenfield resides, as he has for nearly half a century, living in feelings of grief for you, the Vicar, and your Curates, with your Church, continually praying God to save you from idolatry, blasphemy, heresy, and schism, warning all peoples to flee from you and from your abominations, as from the Pope and Popery.

Having thus endured in grief, by the doings aforesaid, I have now some joy by being informed that the greater part of your congregation, Reverend Vicar of Cuckfield, as one person, in grief, are determined to demand your returning to the good old way of worship and order of the old Protestant Episcopal Church, or they will leave you and your Curates to get new congregations. May God enable you to submit to the demand of the honest bold people of Cuckfield.

Amen and Amen.

EDMUND GREENFIELD.

Barnhall House, Sussex.

London: E. Palmer and Son, Printer, 18, Paternoster Row.

What Greenfield is actually saying

In simple modern language:

Your curates are also telling people that Christians outside the Church of England cannot be saved. The curate at St Mark’s has personally attacked me, tried to lure members away from my chapel and distributed pamphlets claiming that Nonconformist ministers like me are not genuine Christian ministers.

This has destroyed the previously friendly relationship between local Anglicans and Dissenters. I believe that many of your own parishioners are equally unhappy and will leave unless you restore the older, simpler Protestant form of worship.

The essential point

This was both a religious protest and a local struggle for influence.

Greenfield was defending his chapel, his congregation and his own standing in Staplefield. His message to Maberly was effectively:

His language is extraordinarily fierce—“idolatry”, “blasphemy”, “heresy”, “the Pope and Popery”—but that reflects the intensity of Victorian Protestant fears about the Oxford Movement. It should not be read as an impartial description of what Maberly and his curates were actually doing.