Modern British Heresy

Only two people, t o the best of my knowledge,  have been prosecuted for heresy in Cambridge University since 1689. In 1710 William Whiston was the first, then William Frend in 1793. ( Wiki ) Cambridge, like the rest of the country, had been upskittled by the French Revolution in 1789, and its destabilising aftermath. In 1792 Revolutionary France went to war against the Austrian empire; the English gave the Austrians financial and material aid.  On 1 February 1793 France declared war against England. In Cambridge there was some minor rioting in which dissenters were targeted and some windows broken. At one point the Riot Act was read.  This should not be over-interpreted. The authorities were undoubtedly worried but the majority of residents were probably more concerned with growing insecurity and rising prices. I think this is the only heresy case where inflation has explicitly been a complicating factor. Frend had studied at the University from 1776, aged 20, graduating in 1780. In t

   This case meets my criteria for inclusion in this study in a way that is unique. My tests are (1) that there should have been an accusation of heresy followed (2) by some form of official response. In every other case I have come across the official response is addressed to the accused - in this case the person who instigated the accusation was the person prosecuted. Exonerated in his first trial, he was condemned in the second.   Part of the context, though beyond the stretch of my focus on heresy, was several court cases in the same year and earlier, on issues of worship and ritual as part of the continuing civil war in the church initially sparked by the Oxford Movement in the 1830s.      Background In the summer of 1874 Rev Flavel Cook, incumbent of Christ Church, Clifton in Bristol, gave a series of sermons on the nature of rationalism. Amongst his congregation and audience was Mr Jenkins, a barrister of independent means. The men and their families lived a few houses apart on

Arthur Whalley was a master in the Free  Grammar School and Lecturer in the Parish Church of Kington, Herefordshire [ present day website] . (The school’s trustees included the Bishop of Hereford.) He was an ordained priest in the Church of England and by 1833 had drifted away from orthodox Anglicanism. His case was first heard on 13 February 1834 in Hereford Consistory Court (the Bishop’s court) before Chancellor Taylor. Twenty-one charges were laid against him, though these were reduced in the process of adjudication and can perhaps be summarised as two: that, by preaching in public places and by the content of that teaching, he had dissociated himself from the Church of England; and that he no longer conformed to the worship of that church.  Whalley accepted as fact the allegations put to him, and wanted the matter dealt with quickly as the court itself, in his view, “was of Anti-christ” and, despite having “the head of all power” on his side, it would find against him.   At his s