CHAPTER XXXIV. ST. SAVIOUR'S, LEEDS FOR LEEDS - FIRST PROJECT OF A CHURCH LAYING THE FOUNDATION STONE COSTLY GIFTS-ALTAR PLATE-ALARM AT SECESSIONS 1845-1846. PUSEY'S attitude with regard to Rome and the English Church at the time of Newman's secession has just been described. Personally he was in no way shaken. He did not share in the general dismay entertained by many earnest Churchmen. In spite of the anxiety and distress occasioned to himself by his friend's secession, he continued the more positive methods for strengthening and extending the hold of the Church upon the masses. It has been seen with what munificent generosity he had contributed to the Bishop of London's scheme for building churches in East London. And in this he had been seconded by the devoted and self-sacrificing spirit of his wife. The same generosity and zeal for the spiritual welfare of men were now to go forth in another direction— in one of the great northern towns. In the same month in which Newman joined the Church of Rome, the church of St. Saviour's, Leeds, built entirely by Pusey's liberality, was consecrated. While Mrs. Pusey was lying on what proved to be her deathbed in the early months of 1839, the discussion which First Offer of a Church for Leeds. 467 preceded the erection of the Martyrs' Memorial was in progress. Pusey, it will be remembered, had declined to identify himself with Mr. Golightly's scheme for paying monumental honour to three of the reformers; but he was willing to contribute to a church which should commemorate the blessings 'which we owe to the Reformation.' When Pusey stated this to Hook, the latter discerned an opportunity which might be made the most of: REV. DR. HOOK TO E. B. P. Vicarage, Leeds, April 3, 1839. We do most sadly want churches here. For two or three thousand pounds we could build a handsome one. Now many of our friends (wherein I think them, I confess, to have been mistaken, since we ought to honour all who have suffered hardship for the Church) refused to subscribe to the Oxford Memorial. Ought they not to show that it was on principle only that they refused to give, but that their money is ready for the building of a church? They might easily raise the sum wanted. I should say, let it be at least equal to the sum raised for the Memorial. Let them come to Leeds-a most needy place. Let the church be dedicated to St. Bede, or Paulinus, or to some of the worthies of our Northern Church. Let it be erected by contributors to the Oxford Tracts and their friends—or by any other title by which you would prefer to have yourselves called. . . Ever, my dear friend, Most affectionately yours, Mrs. Pusey's death, and the cares which followed it, delayed Pusey's answer to this appeal. But he did not forget it. We have seen that he looked upon his wife's death chiefly in the light of a chastisement for sins of his own; Keble had had to warn him against excess of bitter self-reproach. From this date he regarded himself habitually as a penitent; and the question was how to bring forth works meet for repentance. He determined to retrench personal and domestic expenses even more than heretofore, and to devote the money thus saved to the public purposes of the Church. He is himself the penitent referred to in the subjoined letter; but there was no reason for saying this to his correspondent, and more than one against doing so. E. B. P. TO REV. DR. HOOK. [Pusey], August 14, 1839. I know a person who wishes in such degree as he may, if he lives, to make up a broken vow, in amount if not in act. It would amount to about £1,500. It would be a long time before it could be raised, as it must be raised probably out of income. Supposing it ever raised, would it build you an Oratorium, such as you wish? The only condition which the person wishes to annex is an inscription such as this -'Ye who enter this holy place, pray for the sinner who built it,' to which I suppose there would be no objection. If you approve of it, as soon as any money comes in to him available for this purpose, it shall be paid to your account through me, and might gradually accumulate so as to raise somewhat above the £1,500, if he should live, or make a nucleus for building a chapel, if he should not. Hook thanked him warmly for his 'offer of a church to be built by a friend.' He added: August 16, 1839. I see no objection to the inscription, but you forget that the leave of the Bishop must be obtained for it. I will, however, mention it to our dear good Bishop, and of course he will not object. Who would? And so I may close with your offer. I should like, if it be true, to have it said that the church is built by writers of the Oxford Tracts,-or something to mark the school from which the good deed emanates. The Bishop consented to the inscription, provided the parties were living for whom the prayers were required. Pusey wished to leave matters in Hook's hands. E. B. P. TO REV. DR. HOOK. Christ Church, Dec. 2, 1839. My poor friend did not mean to make any 'demands' or conditions as to church-building. All he really wants is the inscription, and, having obtained that, he will gladly leave the rest to you. What I said was suggested by what you wrote some time since, in which you proposed that some of us should build an oratory at Leeds, after the plan at Littlemore. The reason for suggesting Holy Cross as the dedication of the new church was that Holy Cross Day (Sept. 14th) was a great day for' Pusey. On that day he had been made a member of Christ by baptism; and he observed it, as the Prayer-book Calendar suggested, as a festival of Proposed Purchase of a Portuguese Church. 469 the Redemption, in its relation to himself, throughout the last forty-nine years of his life. The destruction of convents in Spain in the spring of 1840 led Pusey to think that it would be 'an act of piety to gather up some of the fragments, and replace them in a church in this country.' 'I hear,' he wrote to Hook, 'of a church which cost £30,000 to be sold for £3,000. A fortnight afterwards this idea took a more concrete form:— E. B. P. TO REV. DR. HOOK. Christ Church, June 5, 1840. I have an opportunity of buying a church for my friend in Portugal near the coast. It is offered for £3,000, but the expenses of removal will I suppose be very heavy, though it is hoped that the duties might be remitted. Now what would be the expenses of bringing the materials from the coast to Leeds? I see you are on a navigable river, but the expense might still be so great that it might be unadvisable to bring it there, or at least more than the ornamental work. I do not yet know the size of the church; it is a conventual church, and if not bought would be desecrated; but after all, it may not answer the purpose, or may be sold already, but I thought it right to ask these preliminaries. Ever your very affectionate friend, E. B. PUSEY. Hook replied that nothing could be easier than watercarriage by the river Aire to Leeds. But he was willing to release Pusey's 'friend' from his promise, if he thought he could carry out his purpose better elsewhere than at Leeds. But Pusey preferred to build a church at Leeds. If his 'friend' could succeed in buying the Portuguese church it would be more beautiful than any of English make at the same cost. In a later letter Pusey adds : 'July 17, 1840. 'I have no objection to its being known (which you suggested might be of use) that I am the instrument of the church being thus built at Leeds, but I should wish particularly that the degree of interest which I take in the matter should be kept as quiet as may be, lest it should be fixed upon me. How pertinaciously e. g. has the £5,000 given to the London churches been fixed upon Keble, although he has denied it again and again!' By the close of 1840 the site of the new church had been purchased, and it was arranged that Pusey should preach at the laying of the first stone or at the consecration. In 1841 Pusey and Hook had gone so far as to discuss and endeavour to select a curate for the church. REV. DR. HOOK TO E. B. P. MY DEAR FRIEND, Vicarage, Leeds, Feb. 23, 1841. I wish you clearly to understand what I desire with respect to your church. You will pardon me if, to express my wish concisely, I use an offensive (because made a party) term, but I wish for a fair living representative of the Oxford Tract system; one who will not offend people by adopting some minor but offensive (unjustly) points in the first instance, while all the greater things are neglected; one who will not talk of the celibacy of the clergy, and then marry: who will not talk of fasting, and never fast: &c., &c., but who will be a living example of what he preaches, and will proceed from right principles to right practices, preserving a consistency in all his ecclesiastical arrangements. Send in short such as you approve of. I want consistency in him, an agreement, as far as may be, between what he says and what he does; one who may be an example to me as well as to others; who may be to me what the hermits were to St. Chrysostom. Now I do not mean to say that I want every clergyman to be thus. We have all our different callings; some are called to mix more with men than others. Then those who have families cannot do all that they ought to do in self-denial. You know not, my dear Pusey, how perplexed, how miserable I sometimes am, from not knowing how to act, pulled on one side by the claims of my family, on the other by the claims of the parish. In your prayers for unity, sometimes remember your poor friend. ... I am, my dear friend, Most affectionately yours, W. F. HOOK. At the same time arose the question how the new church was to be endowed, and to what amount. Pusey writes about this just before the troubles concerning Tract 90: E. B. P. TO REV. DR. HOOK. Christ Church, Feb. 22, 1841. I am suspicious about endowments: we want more than all we can get for the present, and cannot afford to provide for posterity. We must shift as we can, and trust that when by God's mercy we have weathered the present storm, He may give the peaceful days of Solomon, when His house shall be built in beauty and glory and solidity. I would not hinder others; but if I had an estate of £20,000 at my command, these seem days in which we should rather sell lands and houses and lay the price at the Apostles' feet, than endow churches |