Page:Distinguished Churchmen.djvu/161

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THE REV. GEORGE BAYFIELD ROBERTS
129

tionalise the parish schools. But the restoration of Catholic doctrine and discipline soon became the primary object. All the unions were affiliated with the Bristol Union, and among them were the Metropolitan Union, which particularly laboured for the revival of Convocation, and the London Church Union, which organised the Gorham meetings—after the Gorham judgment in 1850. Things went on thus for some time. Then the failure of Archdeacon Denison in 1853 to secure the rejection of Mr Gladstone from the Parliamentary representation of the University of Oxford broke up the coalition of Churchmen which had hitherto existed in defence of Church Education. The prosecution of Archdeacon Denison, the passing of the Divorce Act, and the decision of the Privy Council in Liddell v. Westerton, led to the incorporation of the existing Church unions with the Church of England Protection Society. That Society originated in a conference of a small number of leading Churchmen, under the chairmanship of Sir Stephen Glynne, Bart., on February 8, 1859. In May 1860 the Society became the English Church Union, with the Hon. Colin Lindsay as first President and the Rev. W. Gresley as Vice-President. Among the members of the Council were some notable Churchmen of the time, such as Mr Bennett, of Frome, the Hon. George Boyle, Mr Robert Brett, Canon Carter,