High Church Presence and Persistence in the Reign of George III (1760–1811)

Tractarian leaders tended to disparage the ‘high-and-dry’ Tory churchmen whom they regarded as only very half-heartedly holding on to a sacramental inheritance. In fact, the signs of doctrinal and mildly ritualistic High Churchmanship in the period between 1760 and 1811 were not inconsiderable, and they fed into the lasting cultural deposit of the Oxford Movement. High Churchmen remained an appreciable presence during those decades, exercising an importance in Church and state out of all proportion to their numerical strength. Their witness deserves attention in its own right, and not simply as a pointer back to the ‘Caroline divines’ and the Nonjurors or forward to Anglo-Catholicism.