Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/67

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Pusey
61
Pusey

‘Essays and Reviews;’ the later controversy about Darwinism and Old Testament criticism, are all represented in these volumes, besides several interesting sermons on the Jewish interpretation of prophecy. Other collected series of sermons were: ‘Sermons during the Seasons from Advent to Whitsuntide,’ 2 vols. 1848–53; ‘Parochial Sermons’ (vol. i. 1848, 5th edit. 1854; vol. ii. 1853, new edit. 1868; vol. iii. 1869); Lenten sermons (1874); and ‘Parochial and Cathedral Sermons’ (1883). The last contains perhaps the most tender, searching, and spiritual of all his discourses. In the preface he pleads characteristically that he may be allowed to leave as a last bequest to the rising generation of clergy the exhortation that they will ‘study the fathers, especially St. Augustine.’ Various selections from his sermons were published in 1883 and 1884.

There is complete unity in Pusey's ecclesiastical work. He believed that the true doctrines of the church of England were enshrined in the writings of the fathers and Anglican divines of the seventeenth century, but that the malign influences of whig indifferentism, deism, and ultra-protestantism, had obscured their significance. To spread among churchmen the conviction that on the doctrines of the fathers and early Anglican divines alone could religion be based was Pusey's main purpose. With this aim he set out in company with Newman and Keble. At its inception the movement occasioned secessions to Rome which seriously weakened the English church, and seemed to justify the storm of adverse criticism which the Oxford reformers encountered. Unmoved by obloquy, Pusey, although after the secession of Newman he stood almost alone, never swerved from his original purpose. He possessed no supreme gifts of rhetoric, of literary persuasiveness, or of social strategy. Yet the movement which he in middle life championed almost single-handed proceeded on its original lines with such energy and success as entirely to change the aspect of the Anglican church. This fact constitutes Pusey's claim to commemoration. Of himself he wrote with characteristic self-effacement when reviewing his life: ‘My life has been spent in a succession of insulated efforts, bearing indeed upon one great end—the growth of catholic truth and piety among us.’

A portrait by George Richmond, R.A., is at Christ Church. His library was purchased for the ‘Pusey House,’ an institution in Oxford which was founded in his memory to carry on his work.

[A Life of Pusey, prepared by Canon Liddon, was completed after Liddon's death by the Rev. J. O. Johnston and the Rev. B. J. Wilson. Vols. i. and ii. appeared in 1893, vol. iii. in 1894. See also Newman's Apologia pro Vitâ suâ; T. Mozley's Reminiscences of Oriel; J. B. Mozley's Letters, ed. Anne Mozley; Newman's Letters, ed. Anne Mozley; Church's Oxford Movement; Oakeley's Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement; Palmer's Narrative of Events; Browne's Hist. of the Tractarian Movement; Isaac Williams's Autobiography; W. G. Ward and the Catholic Revival; Mark Pattison's Memoirs; Prothero's Life of Dean Stanley; Purcell's Life of Cardinal Manning.]

J. O. J.

PUSEY, PHILIP (1799–1855), agriculturist, born at Pusey, Berkshire, on 25 June 1799, was the eldest son of Philip Pusey (1748–1828), by his wife Lucy (1772–1858), daughter of Robert Sherard, fourth earl of Harborough, and widow of Sir Thomas Cave. The father was the youngest son of Jacob Bouverie, first viscount Folkestone, whose sister married the last male representative of the Pusey family. The latter's sisters bequeathed the Pusey estates to their brother's nephew by marriage, Philip Bouverie, the agriculturist's father, on condition of his assuming the name of Pusey. This he did on 3 April 1784, and took possession of the estates in 1789. Philip's next brother was Edward Bouverie Pusey [q. v.] A sister Charlotte married Richard Lynch Cotton [q. v.], provost of Worcester College, Oxford.

After education at Eton, Philip entered Christ Church, Oxford, at Michaelmas 1817, but left without taking a degree. At Oxford, as at Eton, his greatest friend was Henry John George Herbert, lord Porchester, afterwards third earl of Carnarvon [q. v.], and in 1818 he became engaged to his friend's sister, Lady Emily Herbert, a lady unusually accomplished, sympathetic, and earnest-minded. Presumably on account of his father's objection to his marrying, Pusey joined Porchester in a foreign tour. Near Montserrat, in Catalonia, the travellers fell into the hands of the insurgent guerillas, and were in imminent danger of being shot as constitutionalists, or of the army of the Cortes (Carnarvon, Portugal and Galicia, 1836). Pusey returned home at the end of June 1822, and was married on 4 Oct. 1822. He settled with his wife at the Palazzo Aldobrandini, Rome, where they made the acquaintance of the Chevalier Bunsen. As a memorial of his Roman sojourn, Pusey presented a pedestal for the font in the German chapel at Rome, with groups in relief by Thorwaldsen (Bunsen, Memoirs, i. 373–4). On his father's death, 14 April 1828, he came into possession of the family estate.

In 1828 Pusey published pamphlets on