In 1736 an almost united bench of bishops in the House of Lords scuppered legislation to relieve Quakers from prosecution for their refusal to pay tithes. In his first post for the Georgian Lords, Dr Ben Rogers considers how this controversy reignited disputes between the government, the Church of England, and religious dissenters, and led to an irretrievable breach between Robert Walpole and his former ally in the Lords, Edmund Gibson, bishop of London.

One of the keys to Sir Robert Walpole’s success was his tactful avoidance of religious disputes. In previous decades the rallying cry of ‘the Church in Danger’ was weaponised by Tories and defenders of the Church of England to attack the protections given to Protestant dissenters under the Toleration Act of 1689. This hostility frequently turned violent, most notably in the Sacheverell riots in 1710, and in the early years of George I’s reign perceived attempts to undermine the Church, such as the failed proposal to repeal the Test Act in 1719, resulted in a hostile backlash. Walpole’s ministry avoided such arguments and, in alliance with sympathetic bishops in the Lords, such as Edmund Gibson, bishop of London, he prevented religious disputes by not proposing measures that antagonised the Church.

In 1736, however, Walpole suffered a rare miscalculation and was unprepared for the almost unanimous opposition that the bishops presented against his ministry’s support for the Quakers tithe bill. What made matters worse was that the episcopal opposition was spearheaded by Gibson, Walpole’s erstwhile ally.

Although Quakers could legally worship outside of the Church of England after 1689, they were still obliged to pay ‘tithes’, whereby households paid a tenth of their income to maintain the Church. This requirement caused consternation for Quakers as they believed that true ministry came directly from God and viewed compulsory church taxes as akin to spiritual tyranny. Quakers who refused to pay the tithe were often cited before the exchequer and ecclesiastical courts for the recovery of these sums. Earlier legislation from 1699 had introduced a summary method of prosecution before local JPs and allowed appeals to be lodged at the Quarter Sessions. The Quakers tithe bill was drafted by John Strange, the future Solicitor General, with some direction from Quaker representatives, and was introduced into the Commons on 17 March 1736 by William Glanville. It intended to make the summary method obligatory for cases brought before the exchequer and ecclesiastical courts and therefore appealed both to Whig support for toleration and their opposition to religious persecution. [CJ xxii. 635]

Walpole backed the tithe bill along with a separate mortmain bill. The latter aimed to prevent large tracts of land from falling under the ‘dead hand’, or becoming inalienable, by restricting the ability of charitable corporations to receive benefactions from dying men. Such a restriction would have limited charities within the Church of England and Walpole’s choice to back it, along with supporting the tithe bill, represented an interesting about-face. However, Walpole’s motivations were political, rather than religious. Although he had a strong majority in the Commons, there was always potential for an alliance between the Tories and the opposition Whigs. By supporting these bills, he could rally the government and opposition Whigs by exposing the Tories’ hostility towards dissenters.

Despite some Tory opposition the tithe bill passed through the Commons, but Walpole did not consult the bishops, and he was taken aback by the hostile reaction from the episcopal bench in the Lords. Under Gibson’s leadership, the bishops conducted a series of meetings to plan how they would challenge the bill and sent circular letters to encourage the clergy to oppose it. Between 26 March and 4 May about 40 petitions against the bill were submitted to the Commons. Central to the bishops’ opposition was their claim that the tithe and mortmain bills represented an Erastian (or the subordination of the Church to the state) encroachment by a hostile Whig ministry. By restricting the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, the tithe bill was an assault on the rights of the Church. Publications such as The Country Parson’s Plea Against the Quakers Tythe-Bill, which has been attributed to Thomas Sherlock, the then bishop of Salisbury, stressed the Church’s case and provoked a series of replies from Quaker pamphleteers. [Sherlock, The Country Parson’s Plea, 35]

These concerns produced a strong majority among the bishops when the bill had its second reading before the Lords on 12 May. Fifteen of the 26 bishops were present to vote against it, and six episcopal proxies were also available to the opposition if needed. What made this concerning for the ministry was that 14 of the 26 bishops had been elevated to the episcopate since 1723, while eight others had been translated. This meant that the bench should, in theory, have been sympathetic to Walpole. Owing to the senility of William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury, Gibson emerged as the effective leader of the bishops and his strength became apparent when the Lords voted by 55 against 35 to defeat the bill. [Cobbett, ix. 1180–1219]

The reaction in the Church was jubilant. It was reported that the Te Deum, the traditional hymn of praise, was sung at the Chapter and Childs Coffee House near St Paul’s after the bill failed. [Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, 15 May 1736]. The defeat was an embarrassment for Walpole and, to rebuild trust with the bishops, his ministry conceded wrecking amendments that effectively negated the bill. Despite this, Gibson’s opposition resulted in the breakdown of his relationship with Walpole, who now referred to the bishop of London as a ‘Ringleader of sedition’. [St Andrews University Library, Gibson MS 5303]

Gibson had consistently attended the Lords since his elevation to the episcopate, but after the tithe bill episode his attendance was sporadic until his death in 1748. Furthermore, following the death of Archbishop Wake in 1737 Gibson, who had been expected to succeed at Canterbury, was passed over in favour of John Potter. Quaker communities were also dismayed by the failure of the tithe bill. Joseph Ollive, writing in 1737, attacked the bishops for their opposition and maintained that tithes remained ‘a very unequal and a forced maintenance’. [Ollive, A plea on behalf of the people call’d Quakers, 6]

The tithe bill, like the excise controversy in 1733, was another example where Walpole miscalculated and revealed that his support in the Lords was not as strong as he believed. However, the controversy also proves that religious concerns still had traction and that the bishops could invoke ‘the Church in Danger’ when established Anglicanism’s position was perceived to be under threat.

BR

Further reading:

S. Taylor, ‘Sir Robert Walpole, The Church of England, and the Quakers Tithe Bill of 1736’, The Historical Journal, xxviii (1985), 51–77

E Sahle, Quakers in the British Atlantic World c.1660–1800 (Woodbridge, 2021)