Milford chronicle., 1888-03-02
THE ENGLISH CHURCH TIMES
Friday December z5,d, 1857.
ALEXANDER HERIor MAcKoNocHn

Mr.. Mackonochie's tragic death while
the guest of the Bishop Of Argyll at Bal
lachulish is already familiar news, and is
indirectly a consequence ofthe protracted
worrying he underwent from the Puritan
faction in the Church of England. He
might well have lived life Of active use
fulness for dozen more years. That he
was broken down in mind and body is
the joint work of the Church Association
and of its ready tool, the Judicial Com
mittee Of Privy Council. Had he been
unmolested, he would be now actively
employed with Christmas preparations in
Holborn, and not dead in a Scotch snow
drift. There is this to be said in pallia-
ton of the Puritan clergy, that they are
almost to a man, entirely ignorant of the
merits of the questions at issue; they have
never been accustomed to read or think;
they have taken their own infallibility for
granted and they have seen that their
influence (which they believe to be the
very salt of the Church Of England) has
steadily and rapidly waned since the later
Developments of their High Church COM
petitors. It is thus to some extent not
only quite natural, but even pardonable,
that they should have tried to evict the
lawful occupants from that Church Of
England wherein they are themselves
little more than squatters, and should
really suppose that they had legal as well
as religious right ON their side But 10
such excuse can be urged on behalf of
the discredited tribunal which put wea-
pons into their destructive hands. The
law of the matter is not in the least de-
gree a difficult or complicated question,
as to which mistake is probable and ex-
cusable. No trained lawyer can doubt
for moment that the ritual law of the
Church of England ever since 1902 has
been the legality of all ornaments which
were in use in the Church of England in
tlfe year I54S, before the First Prayer
Book was issued. And even those who,
to get over some polemical difficulties
which this ruling presents, have substi-
tuted the words ''First Prayer Book Of
Edward VI" for Second Year of Ed
ward VI" in their reading Of the Orna-
ments' Rubric, acknowledge that all
which was prescribed by that First Book
continues lawful now. But that covers
the vestments and other of the litigated
usages, which thus remain as an irredu-
chile minimum, even after some other
ceremonies have been ousted by the nom
natural Interpretation just mentioned
On all this repeat, no serious doubt is
possible to legal mind, and consequently
the contrary findings of the Judicial COM
mittee in the Mackonochie, Purchas, and
Ridsdale cases were intentional misinter-
pretations of the law to bring about de-
feat of justice; precisely as occurred in
the Gorham suit, the first of that series of
blots upon English Jurisprudence,
If the history of the Church were like
secular history, Alexander Mackonochie's
life should have been temporarily prosper
Gus, and his Jealous services TO the cause
of religion and civilization would have
received some part, at least, of that Off
cial approval which they merited. After
a more than respectable University career,
and training in pastoral work, first under
James Meyrick at Westbury, aud after
wards under the present Dean Butler at
he came TO London in 1855, and
threw himself energetically into the work
initiated by Mr.. Bryan King in the East
end parish Of St. George, Mapping Here
he was virtually incumbent of the church
in Wellclose-square, and acquired such a
for devout, diligent, and sue
cessful work amongst specially difficult
that he was chosen by Lord |
(then Mr.. Hubbard) as first
incumbent of the new church of St. Al |
bans, Holborn, built on the site of the |
Thieves Kitchen" in Baldwin's Gar
dens. This was in 1862, and he fully JUS
tilted the patrons choice by rapidly civil |
izing the rough district around him, and |
filling his church with devout and intel
ligent congregation. He was convinced,
however, by theory and experience, that
a Catholic setting Of the Prayer Book is a
factor in home missionary work,
apart from other pleas in.its favor Ifhe
had proved to be wrong on this head, had
his church remained empty, and had he
become personally unpopular with his
Pensioners, it is quite possible that he
might have been let alone. But his sue
cess was objectionable, and he was marked |
out for vengeance by a school which has
never yet in its three centuries Of history
known how to forgive.
In 1868, the Privy Council decided
against him on all the main issues in the
suit Martin a. Mackonochie, wherein the
plaintiff acquired his zOus
StaRdi by means Of joint trusteeship of
a school within the parish of St. Albans,
but was in truth acting as the instrument
Of the Church Association, the real prose-
cutor. Mr.. Mackonochie, knowing that
The court which had pretended to try him
had no spiritual, and even no valid civil,
competence 10 do so, took no notice what
ever of the decision, and went on pre-
risely as before, and fresh measures of
were in preparation, when
change came over the position of affairs.
Archbishop TAFT had discovered that the
High Church school was far too stroug to
be bullied, and that the persecution had
failed, and was likely to fail, if it did not
even provoke powerful reaction. Con-
he was unwilling that Mr. Mac
konochie should be further molested Gt |
may be that sympathy with fellow-coun-
Lryman had more to do with his action
han any other motive), and secured the
Bishop of London's assent to an exchange