A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



county. When Bishop Goodwin had occasion to refer to methods of 

 church ministration, ritual defects rather than ritual excesses were the 

 subject of his allocution. Sounds of conflict in the ecclesiastical courts 

 over the colour of vestments or the posture of priests in divine service 

 have not been heard. The full tide of the Oxford Movement was 

 spent before it reached our shores. Clergymen of forty or fifty years' 

 standing speak in admiration of the change which has passed over the 

 county during their ministerial life in the matter of restored churches, 

 bright and orderly services, and reverent behaviour. Here and there an 

 incumbent vests his choir- men and boys in cassock and surplice, takes 

 ' the eastward position,' lights two candles, and perhaps puts on a 

 special vestment for the celebration of the weekly sacrament. But 

 in most of the churches there is no attempt at outward ceremony ; 

 a plain brass cross with two vases for flowers is the only ornament 

 of the altar, and the cassock, surplice, stole and academic hood are 

 the only vestments of the priest. The Public Worship Regulation 

 Act has been a dead letter in Cumberland. 1 During the writer's 

 experience the only rag of ritualism he has ever seen in the county 

 was the black or academic gown for use in the pulpit. In 1872 

 this strange vestment was reckoned among the ' ornaments 'of 1 1 8 

 churches. 2 The black gown now takes its place with the pitch-pipe 

 and the barrel organ as the relic of an extinct ritual. 



Not a little uneasiness in ecclesiastical circles was caused by the 

 extreme line taken up by Dean Close on the ritual controversies of his 

 time, 1856-81. He was a masterful figure in the religious life of Carlisle, 

 and belonged to the straitest sect of militant protestantism. For his earnest 

 eloquence as a preacher and his unwearying advocacy of church extension, 

 temperance, foreign missions and other philanthropic agencies, he deserves 

 a grateful recognition. But he was an uncompromising opponent of Trac- 

 tarianism, which he regarded as ecclesiastical reaction. The vehemence of 

 his denunciation served to propagate the principles he condemned. In 

 1873 proposals to establish a religious community in Caldewgate, a poor 

 and populous district of the cathedral city beneath the windows of the 

 deanery, were carried to completion. It was indiscreetly called ' an 

 oratory,' and had the patronage of a notorious ritualist of a southern 

 diocese. At the same time the incumbent of a neighbouring parish 

 made some alterations in his method of conducting service after the 

 restoration and beautifying of his church, which were interpreted as an 

 advance to Romish practices. In addition to this, the bishop made a state- 

 ment in the cathedral pulpit of what he ' conceived to be sober Church 



1 Under the eighth section of this Act, only one representation was made in the diocese of Carlisle 

 between 1874 and 1898, and the bishop refused to allow proceedings to be taken. It was the case of the 

 vicar of St. George's, Barrow-in-Furness, in 1878 (Public Worship Regulation and Church Discipline, 

 parl. paper, pp. 36-40). The ritual practices complained of were harmless enough, and most of them 

 are now common in the diocese and excite no suspicion. In 1899 Bishop Bardsley testified ' that there is 

 not one instance of a confessional box put up in a church in the diocese of Carlisle ' (Church of England 

 Confessional Boxes, parl. paper, pp. 8-9). 



a Bp. Goodwin, Primary Charge, p. 23. 



