The ecclesiastical historiography of the English people: the Anglo-Saxon church in English history 1799-1849

This thesis investigates the impact of religion on English histories of the Anglo-Saxon Church written between 1799 and 1849. It examines how the contents of these histories reflect nineteenth-century national crises of faith and contemporary debates, and also the importance of historians’ personal faith in deciding on which aspects of Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical history or texts to emphasise and how they present information. It argues that histories of the Anglo-Saxon Church served as conduits for legitimising, challenging, and reconciling nineteenth-century views of faith in England in a period of considerable religious upheaval. I contend that Anglo-Saxon texts were studied not only for their historical, legal, and literary value, but for their religious significance. The main histories examined are Sharon Turner’s History of the Anglo-Saxons (1799-1805); John Lingard’s The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church (1806); Henry Soames’ The Anglo-Saxon Church: Its History, Revenues, and General Character (1835) and An Inquiry into the Doctrines of the Anglo-Saxon Church (1830); and John Mitchell Kemble’s The Saxons in England (1849). The first chapter explores how sixteenth-century doctrinal debates surrounding the eucharistic works of the late-tenth-century Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham re-emerge in the nineteenth century in response to contemporary concerns about the place of Roman Catholicism in English society and history. The second chapter examines how nineteenth-century ideas of religion as integral to national identity manifest in the treatment of Bede’s eighth-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum. I show how the Synod of Whitby of 664 becomes a focal point for debates about the relationship between Church and State, and for questions about English, British, and Roman ecclesiastical ancestry. The final chapter studies how Anglo-Saxon laws feature in national tithe debates in the 1830s, revealing that Anglo-Saxon legal precedent serves to both validate and discredit arguments for Church reform.