ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY a prosecution in the Court of Arches/"^ St. Paul's Knightsbridge and the daughter church of St. Barnabas PimUco were noted for musical services and ' innovations,' ^°^ which were attended by rioting. A few years later St. Andrew's Wells Street, St. Alban's Holborn, All Saints Margaret Street, St. Ethelburga's, St. Mary Magdalene Paddington, and St. Vedast Foster were well known for elaborate ritual and parochial organization. The move- ment grew, and Bishop Tait promoted the Public Worship Regulation Act, passed in 1874,^°* under which Alexander Mackonochie, perpetual curate of St. Alban's Holborn, and Thomas Pelham Dale, rector of St. Vedast's, suifered imprisonment, raising that question of the nature of the Church of England '"^ which has ever since troubled the Church life of London. From the London movement arose the Broad Church party under the leadership of F. D. Maurice and Charles Kingsley, and the change which had come over Church life in London by 1 860 was largely due to the point of view they adopted. It has been pointed out that the divines of the 17th and 1 8th centuries had little sympathy with the moral or philanthropic aspects of religion ; Beilby Porteus was the first Bishop of London whose charges reflected any interest in such matters ; the Tractarians were much occupied with professional questions, and the Evangelicals with combating the new views. It was the clergy of the London movement who developed the abundant Church organization of the present day and brought the needs of the people vividly before their congregations. This work of the Church in the middle of the 19th century is best displayed in Westminster. The improvements in other parts of London had resulted in a great increase of population there, the two parishes of St. Margaret's and St. John's containing, in 1842, a population of 50,000. To provide clergy, churches, and schools the Westminster Spiritual Aid Fund was founded, ^°° and so urgent was the appeal that sufficient money was obtained to build and endow five churches. The parish of St. Mary the Virgin was formed in 1841, and on 8 November 1849 Blomfield laid the stones of Holy Trinity Vauxhall Bridge Road and St. Matthew Great Peter Street, which the inhabitants did their best to injure by breaking the windows, assaulting the workers, and stealing everything on which they could lay their hands. ^"^ The next parishes formed were, in 1850, St. Stephen's Rochester Row, for which Baroness Burdett- Coutts gave nearly jrgo,ooo, and St. James the Less in 1861.^°^ The work of church building was going on steadily in other parts of London. Bishop Blomfield created a fund for this purpose in 1836*°' to which ^^226, 000 was subscribed by 1854"° and twenty-three churches built. "^ Blomfield, who consecrated 198 churches during his episcopacy, was succeeded in 1856 by Bishop Tait, the founder of the Bishop of London's Fund. In 1875 a return showed that since 1840 thirteen new churches had been provided for the parish of St. George's Hanover Square, three for St. Martin's in the Fields, five for St. James's Westminster, four for St. Mar- "' A. Blomfield, Mm. ii, 73. "" Westerton, Case of the Churchwardens and Incumbent of St. Paul's Knightsbridge. "' Stat. 37 & 38 Vict. cap. 85. "' Creighton, The Ch. and the Nation, p. viii. '" Overton and Wordsworth, Christopher Wordsworth, Bp. of Lincoln, 97. '" J. E. Smith, St. John the Evangelist Par. Mem. 224. '»» Ibid. 227.
- "' Blomfield, Proposals for the Creation of a Fund. "" Blomfield, Charge, 1854, p. 25.
"' Tait, Charge; 1858, p. 5.
