Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/240

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224
french protestant exiles.

VI. Clergy of the Bouverie Family.

(1.) Prebendary J. Bouverie. — Rev. John Bouverie was the second son of Edward, of Delapre Abbey; he was rector of Woolbeding in Sussex, and a prebendary of Lincoln. Born 13th January 1779, died 9th June 1855, aged seventy-six.

(2.) Prebendary E. Bouverie. — Rev. Edward Bouverie, second son of Bartholomew Bouverie, M.P., was born 15th August 1783. He was vicar of Coleshill, also a chaplain in ordinary to the Queen, and a prebendary of Salisbury. He married, 20th November 1811, Frances Charlotte, daughter of Henry Reginald Courtenay, Bishop of Exeter; in 1835 this lady’s brother succeeded to the peerage as eleventh Earl of Devon, and she became Lady Frances Bouverie; she died 29th March 1854. The prebendary survived till 22d July 1874, having almost completed his ninety-first year.

(3.) Archdeacon Bouverie. — Rev. William Arundell Bouverie, the third son of Bartholomew Bouverie, M.P., was born 6th February 1797. He was rector of Denton Harleston, and Archdeacon of Norfolk. He died 23d August 1877, aged eighty.

(4.) Canon Pleydell Bouverie. — Hon. and Rev. Frederick Pleydell Bouverie was the third son of Jacob, second Earl of Radnor. He was born 16th November 1785. He became B.A. of All Souls’ College, Oxford, in 1805, M.A. in 1810. In 1816 he was rector of Pewsey in Wiltshire, and in 1826 rector of Whippingham in the Isle of Wight, and Canon of Salisbury. He married 1814, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Joseph Sullivan, Bart, of Thames Ditton, and by her had six sons and seven daughters. The eldest son, Frederick William, is a Rear-Admiral; the second, Laurence, is a Lieutenant-Colonel, and the fourth is Lieutenant-Colonel Philip Arthur Pleydell Bouverie Campbell, of Dunoon. Canon Pleydell Bouverie died on 6th June 1857, in his seventy-second year.

(5.) Rev. Edward Bouverie Pusey, D.D. — As already detailed, this celebrated divine was a grandson of Jacob Bouverie, first Viscount Folkestone. He was born on 22d August 1800. He was educated at Eton, whence he went to the University of Oxford, which was his residence during the remainder of his life. He graduated in 1822 with honours as a first-class in classics, and became a Fellow of Oriel College. In 1828 he was made Regius Professor of Hebrew and a Canon of Christ Church. In that year he married Maria Catherine, youngest daughter of Raymond Barker, Esq. of Fairford Park, Gloucestershire. (She died in 1839, leaving a son, Philip Edward, who died before his father, and two daughters.)

His first appearance as an author was also in 1828, and was occasioned by Rev. Hugh James Rose’s Lectures on German Rationalism. Pusey’s book was rather a rival performance than a reply. Rose approved of rational theology within certain limits, and found the germs of rationalism (in the offensive sense) among the successors of the Protestant Reformers. Pusey found the rationalistic germs in the nature and circumstances of the Protestant Reformation itself. This book, which he withdrew from circulation in 1834, I might have passed over without notice, if it had not been that it was the author’s first note in his denunciations of Protestantism, and in his declaration of war between the Catholic system and the Genevan. The French Protestants, like all Christendom, have heard of the Anglican party of anti-Protestants, named Puseyites, after this descendant of the refugees. They have been startled by hearing that a scion of such stock, although not himself joining the Romish priesthood, should advocate a theory of the Lord’s Supper but slightly different from the Romish mass, also the confessional, priestly absolution, convents, &c, &c, &c. Dr. Pusey became known as a leader in the Romanizing direction in 1833, the date of the publication of No. 1 of those Oxford “Tracts for the Times” (which occasioned the nickname of Tractarians), which were continued until the series had reached No. 90. He was a partner in their production from the first, although he was the actual writer of none until No. 18. In 1843 he preached before Oxford University on the “Holy Eucharist,” and was suspended from preaching before the University for three years. This is not the place for enlarging on such a subject. Dr. Merle D’Aubigné has expressed the astonishment of the descendants of the Huguenot refugees in their own language,[1] thus:—

“Il s’est forme, meme parmi des ministres anglicans, un parti enthousiaste des rites — des habits sacerdotaux — des doctrines superstitieuses de Rome — et qui attaque vivement la Réforme. Les excès aux quels se portent quelques-uns de ceux qui le composent sont inouis. L’un d’eux établit une comparaison entre les reformateurs et les hommes de la terreur —
  1. D’Aubigné, “Histoire de la Reformation au temps de Calvin,” tome v., préface.