Theology & Religion
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
The Life of Richard Waldo Sibthorp
Evangelical, Catholic and Ritual Revivalism in the Nineteenth-Century Church
Author Text to Follow
Richard Sibthorp, youngest son of
a celebrated Lincolnshire family, became through his forceful preaching
and acknowledged piety, one of the leading Anglican Evangelicals
of the 1820s. During the next decade, close study of the Old Testament
turned him into a High Churchman who transformed his chapel on the
Isle of Wight into a pioneering centre of ritualism. In 1841, at
great personal cost, he converted to Rome. More astonishing was
his announcement, in October 1843, that he was returning to the
Establishment. Eighteen months as a priest had persuaded him the
Protestant Reformers were right: the Papacy was indeed the prophesied
Antichrist, the ‘great harlot’.
That the elderly Sibthorp eventually returned to Rome and
ended his days as a respected priest of Nottingham Cathedral appears
only to confirm his reputation as an eccentric whose career may
amuse but can offer little instruction. This new biography, however,
by carefully analysing Sibthorp’s response to the powerful
theological movements that swirled around him, challenges this received
opinion. He emerges as a man of impressive spirituality, unwilling
to compromise in his search for truth, even at the price of misunderstanding
and ridicule.
| Hardback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-062-0 |
| Hardback Price: | £55.00 / $67.50 |
| Release Date: | February 2005 |
| Page Extent / Format: | 272 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
| Illustrated: | No |
Preface
List of Illustrations
1 THE SIBTHORPS OF CANWICK
An Eighteenth-Century Family
A Nineteenth-Century Family
The Youngest Son
A Calamitous Inroad
Atoning for Criminal Misconduct
Holiness Regained
The Trials of a Gospel Preacher
2 THE TENTS OF KEDAR – HULL AND TATTERSHALL
The Church Missionary Society
Returning to Lincolnshire
Seeking Direction
The Progress of the Gospel
Leaving Lincolnshire
3 SEEKING DIRECTION – LONDON AND OXFORD
The British and Foreign Bible Society
The Catholic Controversy
The Religious Tract Society
Oxford Again
The Unconditional Freeness of the Gospel
4 A THEOLOGICAL REVOLUTION – THE RYDE
MINISTRY
Slipping the Moorings
The Rector of Brighstone
The Rapid Transition of an Impulsive Mind
'An Abyss of Error, Idolatry and Superstition'
An Ideal Church
Fishing with a Rod
5 HARLEQUINADE AND PALINODIA
Why Are You Become a Catholic?
Who is a Catholic?
The Religious World Responds
Roman Catholic Rejoicing
'A Reed Shaken by the Wind'
A Parting of the Ways
The Rankling of a Thorn
'Thus has Become Extinguished the Brightest Hope'
6 STRUGGLING TO SHORE
Antichrist or Bride?
'A Rope of Sand'
A Broken Vessel
Apprentice to a Cobbler
An Imaginary Via Media
Reinstatement
The Lincoln Ministry
The Path to Sainthood
'Let us Gather up the Fragments of Time on Earth that Remain'
Sibthorp Family Tree
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Michael Trott has spent several years researching the life
of Richard Waldo Sibthorp. Richard Sibthorp ‘became, through
his forceful preaching and acknowledged piety, one of the leading
Evangelicals of the 1820s’. During the next decade his Old
Testament studies turned him into a High Churchman who transformed
his chapel on the Isle of Wight into a pioneering centre of ritualism.
In 1841, at great personal cost, he converted to Rome. More astonishing
was his announcement, in October 1843, that he was ‘returning
to the Establishment’. Sheridan Gilley praises Trott for ‘offering
a sure guide to Sibthorp’s part in the Oxford Movement and
the Evangelical, Catholic and ritual revivals, [and for throwing]
light on some of the wider issues in the pre-history of modern
ecumenism and the study of the Victorian Church’.
Theology
Digest
Michael Trott describes well Sibthorp’s internal tensions,
helping the reader to understand the tragedy behind the caricature
that Sibthorp’s life was for his contemporaries. Trott shows
that there is a certain grandeur behind the caricature: ridicule
might have been piled upon him, but he did not allow fear of it
– or fear of losing influence and position – to divert
him from what he considered right. In another respect, the circuitous
route of Sibthorp’s denominational wanderings offers the reader
an interesting perspective into large areas of the religious landscape
of nineteenth-century England. Trott has done a good job here, and
he should be praised for it.
Recusant History
This work will be of considerable
interest to the large body of readers of Victorian biography and
of Anglican, Evangelical and Roman Catholic theology and history;
to enthusiasts for Lincolnshire – the Sibthorps were a distinguished
local family; and to anyone fascinated by the apparently curious
and eccentric character of a man who touched the lives of the Cardinals
Newman, Manning and Wiseman, Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop Summer of
Winchester, William George Ward, and other luminaries of nineteenth-century
religion. Richard Waldo Sibthorp is already celebrated for his changes
of religious conviction, especially between the Church of England
and the Catholic Church, his life ending in a Catholic requiem and
an Anglican burial, but this is the first major study of him since
his Victorian biography, and draws upon a mass of local archival
material, contemporary printed matter and recent scholarship to
bring him to life. It is informed by a warm but critical regard
for its subject, and with a psychological acuteness lacking in much
academic biography, it makes personal and theological sense of the
continuities underlying his apparently wayward and strange religious
journey, in terms of his anti-Calvinism, fascination with apocalyptic
and quest for holiness, and his susceptibility to a range of religious
traditions offering spiritual life and growth. It brings out well
the paradoxically uncontroversial character of one who was so often
at the heart of controversy himself.…
Dr Trott is to be congratulated for achieving this with simplicity
and economy and an exemplary lucidity, offering a sure guide to
Sibthorp's part in the Oxford Movement and the Evangelical, Catholic
and ritual revivals. The author has, in short, proved himself as
a biographer, a local historian, a family historian, a church historian
and an historian of ideas, carrying his narrative beyond the undoubted
fascination of its immediate subject to throw a light on some of
the wider issues in the pre-history of modem ecumenism and the study
of the Victorian Church.
Sheridan Gilley, author of Newman
and his Age and A History of Religion in Britain
Sibthorp met the great religious characters of his day and
exemplified many of the oddities of the period. These appear in
the new, extremely well researched book by Michael Trott, better
than anything written about him before, and a treat for connoisseurs
of eccentricity.
Daily Telegraph
This is a thrilling, memorable account elegantly circumnavigating
the complex religious controversies of the early Victorian period.…
It is a salutary tale: there is no rest for the active conscience.
The story of Sibthorp, tragically condemned to be ever wandering
against the tide, is a valuable antidote to the certainties of professional
ecclesiastics.
The Tablet
This is an excellent biography of a minor figure in nineteenth-century
church history... A theme of Trott’s book is Sibthorp’s
life-long search for ‘holiness’. Baptized an Anglican
a month after his birth just outside Lincoln in 1792, he began this
quest in adolescence, inspired by the piety of his tutor, an emigre
Roman Catholic priest. ... Sibthorp’s renunciation of Roman
Catholicism after his sudden conversion ... created a brief sensation
in the press, but after 1843 he was largely forgotten. Sadness touched
the remainder of his life as he searched for holiness and truth
in a world of human imperfection.
Victorian Studies
There needs no apology for noticing this biography in
a journal of Lincolnshire history. The Sibthorps have been identified
with Canwick, across the ham from uphill Lincoln, for well over
two centuries. This particular Sibthorp spent a great part of his
life as a priest of the Church of England (with a notable ministry
at Tattershall in this diocese), and at its end (in Nottinghamshire)
as a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. Dr Trott’s over-riding
interest is in whatever contributed to that destination. He has
been exceptionally well served by his publisher; the book is a pleasure
to handle.
... It is an extraordinary story. Three moments are especially
notable. In 1824 he was sufficiently valued in the evangelical Church
Missionary Society for the post of Second Secretary to be created
for him, but which he did not accept. In the years around 1840 his
construction of an enriched pastoral, preaching, and aesthetic ministry
at St James, Ryde – including the ‘scandalous’
innovation of a lectern eagle – was path-breaking. Between
1846 and 1864 Sibthorp conceived, financed, and shaped the St Anne’s
Bede Houses in Lincoln and served as first warden of what is an
ongoing diocesan institution.
Lincolnshire History &
Archaeology
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