ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 



The sad condition of things engendered by the lax administration 

 and neglect of the Whig Bishops of Winchester throughout the eighteenth 

 century was not improved by the translation to this see, on the death of 

 Hoadly, of John Thomas, who had obtained his preferment through 

 being tutor to George III., and who had already occupied the sees of 

 Peterborough and Salisbury. 



Brownlow North, who was successively Bishop of Lichfield, Wor- 

 cester and Winchester (1781), owed his promotion to being half- 

 brother of the premier, Lord North. The current tradition, cited in 

 the Diocesan History, that Bishop North once examined certain candi- 

 dates for ordination on the cricket field is as much a reflection on the 

 laxity of the age as on that of the individual bishop. Nevertheless there 

 was some real church life in the county under Bishop North, especially 

 when the nineteenth century had opened. Between 1804 and his death 

 in 1820, the bishop consecrated new churches at Dogmersfield, Whip- 

 pingham, East Stratton, Micheldever, Chilworth, Fareham, Wyke and 

 Baddesley. It would be doing a wrong to Church history to be silent as 

 to the flagrant nepotism of this episcopate. Long leases of Church pro- 

 perty were granted by Bishop North to members of his family on 

 nominal fines. He appointed a nephew and namesake (afterwards a 

 well known lay preacher) to a lucrative patent office when a babe in 

 arms. The mastership of St. Cross bestowed on his son Francis, after- 

 wards Earl of Guildford, and the outrageous misuse of the hospital funds, 

 became a public scandal. A public inquiry in 1853 resulted in the 

 Master of the Rolls declaring the matter ' a manifest and probably 

 wilful breach of trust ' and that the distribution of the revenues was 

 ' in direct opposition to the evidence and documents in their own 

 custody.' 



To the tutor of George III. and the brother of a prime minister 

 succeeded the tutor of William Pitt. Sir George Pretyman Tomline 

 was appointed to the bishopric of Lincoln and the deanery of St. Paul's 

 in 1787, and thence (after Pitt had failed in his efforts to promote him 

 to Canterbury) translated to Winchester. He ruled the diocese for 

 seven years with some zeal, but will be chiefly remembered for Sydney 

 Smith's caustic attacks on his nepotism. 



A far happier era began in 1827, with the translation from Llandaff 

 of Charles Richard Sumner, whose earnest episcopate lasted for forty 

 years. 1 His very first act on his translation was an augury of the interest 

 Bishop Sumner took in his work, for he was enthroned in his cathedral 



1 His first clerical promotion gave rise to a cabinet crisis and nearly to a change of ministry. In 

 May, 1821, Lady Conyngham, George IV.'s favourite, asked the king to give Mr. Sumner a vacant 

 canonry at Windsor and the king assented. Lord Liverpool, when he heard of it, posted down to 

 Brighton and said that if he was not allowed the distribution of patronage he should resign. The Duke 

 of Wellington and all his colleagues joined in the remonstrance against the presentation of Mr. Sumner 

 and it was cancelled. However in 18*6 the king gave Mr. Sumner the bishopric of Llandaff and next 

 year that of Winchester without consulting the premier or ministers of a weaker cabinet (The Greville 

 Memoirs, i. 467, 117; Correspondence of Duke of WeKngton, i. 195). It is however kindly and justly 

 said by the editor of the Greville Memoirs that if C. R. Sumner ' owed his early advancement to 

 questionable influence, no man ever filled the office with more unaffected piety, dignity and goodness.' 



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