Frances Stone, 1809

 Francis Stone

In 1809 Francis Stone, Rector of Cold Norton in Essex, was tried for heresy. 

He had been educated at Charterhouse School and, from the age of 16, University College, Oxford (1755-1759). In 1760 he was Curate to a relative, Rev Thomas Hunt, at Crawley in Hampshire where he became an Arian. In 1762 he moved to be curate in Worth, Hampshire, and from there to be Rector of St Stephen's Church, Cold Norton, Essex in 1765. [Biography, Cold Norton Church - the building is later than Stone's day.]

Stone had been a fairly prominent supporter of lost causes and a gadfly to those in authority since the 1760s. He espoused liberal theology, and reform in the church based on a critical opinion of the relationship between Church and State. And what he thought, he published.

In 1768, in the good company of Benjamin Hoadly, Bishop of Winchester (wiki), the Unitarian Theophilus Lindsay (wiki) and others, Stone had been a leading advocate of the Feathers Tavern petition to remove the damnatory clauses of the Athanasian creed and the necessity to subscribe to the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. The petition was presented to parliament in 1771 and rejected in 1772. (wiki, National Portrait gallery of the petitioners, though without Stone.)

Stone was Arian in his theology, holding that Christ (though still God) was created by God the Father and subordinate to the Father. He was closer to Unitarianism than to traditional Anglican Christology and was supportive of clergy who preached ‘rational religion’ which (unlike his own position) taught that Christ was merely human. 

In 1777, as Chairman of the Society of the Petitioning Clergy, he published A new, easy and expeditious method of extinguishing the National Debt by the sale of church lands and the alienation of the church's inherited income, with compensation to those lost out. Thereafter the state would pay clergy a flat stipend of £200 a year. Bishops would lose their place in the House of Lords and be replaced by 'parochial bishops' with the same annual remuneration of £200pa. Each candidate for ordination would be "required to submit to examination, to make a general declaration of his Christian faith, to take an oath of allegiance, and to subscribe to the use of the Liturgy established by law."  (As outlined and dismissed here in The Monthly Review Or Literary Journal Enlarged, Volume 58, pp. 413-418.)

I think it unlikely that this proposal was presented with much hope of acceptance. It certainly failed to find support and attracted a degree of public ridicule. And it may be that Stone's politics alienated opinion amongst church leaders at least as much as his theology. 

Offence

On April 10, 1808 Stone received a summons to answer charges of "revolting from, impugning, and depraving, some, one, or more of the Thirty-Nine Articles," by certain doctrines advanced in my Visitation Discourse." 

The charge referred to a sermon Stone had preached two years previously, on July 8, 1806, when the Archdeacon of Essex, William Gretton, had been present for a Visitation. The sermon was entitled Jewish Prophecy the sole criterion to distinguish between genuine and spurious Christian Scripture (Here). 

Stone was charged under the Elizabethan Act for the Ministers of the Church to be of Sound Religion (13 Eliz. c. 12, 1571) with ‘advisedly maintaining or affirming doctrine directly contrary or repugnant to the Articles of Religion’. In particular he was accused of disavowing the doctrines of the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and atonement through the blood of Christ contrary to Articles I and II of the Thirty-nine Articles. 

His hearing voiced the integration of church and state. The prosecution was mounted by the government on the grounds that it was a matter of public interest. Stone, not unreasonable, blamed his bishop, James Yorke (wiki), for the action against him. 

Trial

Stone was 70 by the time of his trial. He had married a second time, had eight children of whom one was a baby, and held a living worth £300 a year.

He was tried in the Consistory Court of the Diocese of London (because that was where his sermon had been published) before Sir William Scott. Arguments were heard on both sides and he was found guilty. Judge Scott gave him a day in which to recant his false doctrine. 

The following day Stone submitted an unrepentant letter to the court, arguing that his ordination oath was to teach only those doctrines clearly stated in scripture, which promise was superior to his assent to the Thirty-nine Articles. He promised not to offend in future. His mitigation was deemed irrelevant and his conviction was confirmed.

(Note: The crime of heresy was not the teaching or opinion per se, but the heretic's insistence on retaining his views despite attempts at correction. The principle that a heretic was both 'obstinate' and 'contumacious' seems to be a reference to the writings of Jan Hus, though I have not found a specific source. The idea was embodied in the Church Discipline Act 1840.)

The court had found Stone guilty, but only the church could pronounce sentence. Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London supported by Bishop of Lincoln, George Tomline, and members of the Cathedral chapter, came in person to the court to deprive Stone of his living. 

Stone appealed to the Court of Arches (the Provincial court). Conviction and sentence were both upheld.

One procedural element of this judgement was to be alluded to and quoted with approval in several future cases. Sir William Scott observed that ‘the mild and wise spirit of toleration which has prevailed in modern times’ meant a person could leave the Church of England and join another. Yet such toleration did not mean that a member of the clergy of the Church of England, in the pay of that Church, had liberty to preach against the doctrines of the Church of England. He added,

I think myself bound at the same time to declare, that it is not the duty nor inclination of this Court to be minute and rigid in applying proceedings of this nature; and that if any article is really a subject of dubious interpretation, it would be highly improper that this Court should fix one meaning and prosecute all those who hold a contrary opinion regarding its interpretation. It is a very different thing where the authority of the Articles is totally eluded; and the party deliberately declares the intention of teaching doctrine contrary to them. (Broderick and Fremantle, Ecclesiastical Cases related to Doctrine and Discipline, London: John Murray, 1865. p., p. 351.)

Thus if a court was minded to find against the accused they would do so only after allowing the fullest possible breadth to the interpretation of the Articles of Religion. The court would not demand from the accused greater exactitude of expression than the degree of precision contained in the Articles.

Stone himself was impoverished by the loss of his living and imprisoned for his debts. Unitarians raised a fund and supported him to the tune of £100 a year but he died in 1813 still a pauper

This was to be the last case of the old eighteenth century order. The courts in which Stone was tried, the constitutional relationship of Church and State, and the theological issues which exercised Stone and his accusers were all to undergo extensive change in the following decades.

Stone’s hearing voiced the integration of Church and State. The government, rather than the Church, mounted the prosecution as a matter of public interest. In the Consistory Court of the Diocese of London the Judge, Sir William Scott (later Lord Stowell), asked rhetorically,

For what would be the state and condition of public worship if every man was at liberty to preach, from the pulpit of the Church, whatever doctrines he may think proper to hold? Miserable would be the condition of the Laity, if such pretensions could be maintained by the clergy. (Broderick and Fremantle, p. 350.)

The Church was an organ for stability and public order, effected through clergymen in every corner of the land. The presumption that orthodoxy entailed orthopraxis was realised in political form: clergy who preached dissent inexorably disturbed the public peace.