coming trouble were certain letters in the newspapers which accused him of romanizing, and of disloyalty to the Church of England, and demanded that he should be silenced. This did not disturb him; but when bishops gave in to the clamour and denounced him, he was deeply hurt. For the moment, indeed, it paralysed him, because obedience to episcopal authority was to him an article of faith. One after another certain bishops, when he was announced to preach in their diocese, inhibited him, and even the chaplain-general of the forces forbade him to officiate again in any military chapel (1867). Stanton bowed to the storm; he obeyed and said very little, but it wounded him to the quick. To make matters harder, he had in time to share with his vicar, Mackonochie, the burden and worry of a series of ritual prosecutions which pursued him for nearly fifteen years. Throughout this time and to the end of his life, in spite of all, Stanton continued to work with undiminished earnestness within the limits of his own parish and diocese. As the years went on active opposition died away, leaving him in peace, until in 1906 the report of the royal commission on ecclesiastical discipline laid him open to new attacks. The effect of this was to call out at once the indignant protest of his many friends. Three thousand men, who publicly acknowledged their personal debt to his preaching and influence, signed an address assuring him of their affection and gratitude, and of their resentment at the treatment he had received. During the remaining years of his life he continued his apostolate among young men without molestation. Of official recognition of his work for half a century there was no sign, until in March 1913, the bishop of London, not knowing how seriously ill he was, offered him a prebendal stall in St. Paul's Cathedral. Stanton wrote in courteous terms declining the honour, but the offer, coming from his bishop, pleased him greatly. Within three weeks he died at Stroud (28 March). His funeral through the streets of London was a most striking public demonstration of the place which he had won in the hearts of the people. He was buried at Woking. A chapel, containing his recumbent effigy in bronze, perpetuates his memory in the church which he served.
Stanton was felt to be one of the most attractive and inspiring of the preachers of his day. To him and his quickening eloquence the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Church of England owes much. He printed nothing himself, but since his death two volumes of reports of his sermons have been published and often reprinted, and two volumes of his own sermon-notes. His life—Arthur Stanton, a Memoir—written by his friend, G. W. E. Russell, was published in 1917.
[Personal recollections of one who was his colleague for forty-five years. Portrait, Royal Academy Pictures, 1917.]
STEAD, WILLIAM THOMAS (1849–1912), journalist and author, the son of the Rev. William Stead, Congregational minister, of Yorkshire farmer stock, by his wife, Isabella, daughter of John Jobson, also a Yorkshire farmer, was born at the Manse, Embleton, Northumberland, 5 July 1849. In 1850 the family settled at Howden-on-Tyne. Taught only by his father until he was twelve, Stead went in 1861 to Silcoates School, near Wakefield. In 1863 he was apprenticed office-boy in a merchant's counting-house on Quayside, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In February 1870 he began to contribute articles to the Northern Echo, a liberal daily paper which had just been founded at Darlington, and his contributions were held to be so remarkable that in April 1871 he was appointed editor, although he had never been inside a newspaper office. In 1873 he married Emma Lucy, daughter of Henry Wilson of Howden-on-Tyne, by whom he had six children. During the years 1876–1879 he won high praise for the Northern Echo by his ardent support of Mr. Gladstone in the agitation against Turkey over the Bulgarian atrocities.
In September 1880 Stead moved to London in order to act as assistant-editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, which had recently become a liberal organ under the control of Mr. John (later Viscount) Morley. Morley and Stead worked together excellently until August 1883, when Stead became editor, Morley having been elected M.P. for Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Stead's reputation reached its zenith during the following seven years, when with Mr. Alfred (afterwards Viscount) Milner as his very active and sympathetic lieutenant, he inaugurated the ‘new journalism’, as Matthew Arnold called it. The Pall Mall, until then a sedate chronicle and review of the day's events, suddenly became the initiator of all kinds of new programmes and movements, political and social, besides astonishing people by its dash and unconventionality. In January 1884 General Gordon, who had been on the point of resigning from the army, was dispatched on his fateful mis--
507
