in correspondence, on the attention of Gladstone and W. E. Forster, and the Wesleyan conference supported him. In 1870 he was elected a member for Westminster on the first London school board, and served in that capacity till 1876. With the help of Professor Huxley and W. H. Smith, M.P., he secured the provision of a syllabus of religious instruction. In 1873 he summarised his attitude in 'National Education in its Social Conditions and Aspects.' Subsequently he was a member of the royal commission on elementary education (1886–8), over which Sir Richard Cross presided and which reported in favour of the school board management as against the voluntary system.
In the general administration of Wesleyan affairs Rigg was recognised to be a statesmanlike leader of liberal-conservative temper. Elected chairman of the Kent district in 1865, he was made a member of the legal hundred in 1866. In 1878 he was elected president of the Wesleyan conference, and the unusual distinction was paid him of re-election in 1892. From 1877 until 1896, with two brief intervals, he was chairman of the second London district, and from 1881 to 1909 he was treasurer of the Wesleyan Missionary Society. In controversies concerning the internal organisation of the Wesleyan church Rigg took a middle course. He met the demand of the 'progressive' section under Hugh Price Hughes for an enlarged participation of the laity in the work of the conference, by proposing and carrying the 'Sandwich Compromise' in 1890, which ’sandwiched' a representative lay session between the two sittings of the pastoral session. The compromise lasted till 1901, when the liberal section prevailed and conference was opened by ministers and laymen together, though the pastoral session still retained the privilege of electing the president. Rigg's proposal of 1894, in which Hughes supported him (Methodist Times, 8 Feb. 1894), to exempt chairmen of districts from circuit duties and leave them free to exercise supervision over the district, was rejected by the conference from a suspicion that Rigg's 'separated chairmen' had a colour of episcopacy. Rigg's own position in the matter was defined in his 'Comparative View of Church Organisation. Primitive and Protestant' (1887; 3rd edit. 1896). With Hughes and the progressive party Rigg's relations were often strained. Writing privately to Cardinal Manning, a colleague on the education commission, on the education question, Dec. 1888, he described Hughes as 'your intemperate temperance coadjutor, our methodist firebrand.' The unauthorised publication of the letter in Purcell's 'Life' of the cardinal (1895) led to reprisals by Hughes, who wrote in the 'Methodist Times' an article on 'The Self-Revelation of Dr. Rigg.' At Rigg's request the letter was withdrawn from later editions of Purcell's book, and Hughes and he were reconciled.
Rigg, whose somewhat rough manner caused even friendly admirers to liken him to Dr. Johnson, never abated his literary energies amid his varied activities. For many years he was a member of the committee of the London Library. The chief publications of his later life were: 'The Living Wesley' (1875; re-issued as 'The Centennial Life of Wesley ' in 1891); 'Discourses and Addresses on Religion and Philosophy' (1880); 'Character and Life-work of Dr. Pusey' (1893); and 'Oxford High Anglicanism and its Chief Leaders' (1895; 2nd edit. 1899), an interesting study and the only attempt made by a nonconformist to write a history of the Oxford movement. Rigg was a severe critic of Newman. There followed 'Reminiscences sixty Years ago' (1904), and 'Jabez Bunting, a short Biography ' (1905). Rigg also wrote the article on ’Methodism' in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' (9th edit.). He died on 17 April 1909, at 79 Brixton Hill, where he had lived since 1889, and was buried in Norwood cemetery. He married, on 17 June 1851, Caroline, daughter of John Smith, alderman of Worcester. She died on 17 Dec. 1889, leaving two daughters and a son. The elder daughter, Caroline Edith, is head-mistress of the Mary Datchelor School and Training College, Camberwell; and the son, James McMullen, barrister-at-law, has contributed many articles to this Dictionary. A marble medallion portrait by Adams-Acton is in possession of his daughter, Mrs. Telford, and a marble bust by the same sculptor, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1892, is in Westminster Training College.
[J. H. Rigg: Life by John Telford (his son-in-law), 1909; Miss Hughes's Life of Hugh Price Hughes, 1904; Purcell's Life of Cardinal Manning, 1895; Men and Women of the Time, 1899; Report of Royal Commission on Education, 1888.]
RINGER, SYDNEY (1835–1910), physician, born at Norwich in 1835, was second son of John M. Ringer, a Norwich tradesman, who died when his children were very young, by his wife Harriet. His two
