Flavel Cook, Bristol, 1874
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