Accommodating High Churchmen: The Clergy of Sussex, 1700-1745 by Jeffrey S. Chamberlain (review)

book reviews309 Valeriano remained faithful to Clement VII, but after the pope's death he withdrew to his benefices in BeUuno, where he spent the rest of his days, writing and teaching. This elegant book, beautifuUy written and eminently persuasive, argues that the gilded and fond memories of these humanists have in fact helped to shape the conventional historiography of the Italian Renaissance since the sixteenth century. In this sense, the Sack did represent a watershed, and the traumatic nature of those experiences became "historical or historiographical markers" for us all. I am grateful to Kenneth Gouwens for his prose, for his meticulous scholarship , and for his acute insights. Barbara McClung Hallman California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo, California Accommodating High Churchmen: The Clergy ofSussex, 1700-1745. By Jeffrey S. Chamberlain. (Urbana and Chicago: The University of Illinois Press. 1997. Pp. xix, 192. $32.50.) Of the two best-known English churchmen of the eighteenth century, one spent his days dizzy from port while the other (who needed a clearer head) was mostly dizzy from politics. The first was Parson Woodforde, the second the Vicar of Bray. Both, in their different ways, were forever in search of a party. In that pursuit they seem somehow representative of a church whose character (indeed charism) has been a splendid adaptabUity to the claims of pleasure and profit. Anglicanism's ability to acquire protective clothing has been, over the years,little short of miraculous. Making peace with the powers that be has been the key to its survival. To be sure, one man's pragmatism is another man's perfidy . Even so, Christ himself recognized the need to render unto Caesar: a convenient injunction for those who would seek a good living as well as good living. Nor is this of merely historical curiosity. The present reviewer found himself recently at Sunday worship in St. John's Cathedral, Hong Kong. "O Lord, save the Queen" had been erased from the order of service and in its place was written, quite without embarrassment, "O Lord, save our rulers." Somewhere in that humid outpost a new Vicar of Bray was memorizing Mao. Such thoughts are prompted by Jeffrey Chamberlain's fine study of Sussex AngUcanism after the Hanoverian Succession. If ever there was an accommodation of old and new orders it was that between High Churchmen and triumphant Whiggery in the reigns of the first two Georges. The traditional alliance between the High Church and the Tory Party was shattered, and in its place came a more relaxed attitude to the poUtics and churchmanship of the Whigs. Much of this reflected common sense. Toryism based on Jacobite nostalgia was manifestly a lost cause once the Hanoverians had come into their 310book reviews kingdom. Indeed, the very nostalgia was recognition that the cause was lost. Occasionally when in their cups, High Churchmen longed for the king across the water, but in their hearts they knew he was not going to come. Besides, another reason for Toryism—the need to fight Dissenters—diminished as dissent itself diminished. In fact a greater threat was heterodoxy, and in that struggle High and Low Churchmen could make common cause. Moreover, the Whigs turned out not to be so bad after aU. The Pelham family (of whom the scion was the Duke of Newcastle, the greatest political broker of his day) proved to be perfectly pious in their own way. Patronage from such a source was no shame. This is not to say, of course, that High Church Toryism disappeared. Nor is it to argue that Whigs unUaterally co-opted the High Church to suit their own purposes . Some such co-option indeed took place, but as Dr. Chamberlain argues, "it would be just as true to say that High Churchmen succeeded in modifying Whiggery" (p. 93). There was a great deal more to the relationship between High Churchmanship and Whiggery than piety in search of patronage. In Bray the vicar may have been brazen; in Sussex he was subtle. Dr. Chamberlain's book, pleasingly written and persuasively argued, may be commended with entire confidence. It is sober and serious: more sober, at any rate, than anything Parson Woodforde might...