HIS GRACE THE DEAN: Richard Chenevix Trench 1807-1886

For some reason, 'revision', or, what hostile witnesses tend to call, 'revisionism', has got a bad name in some Irish historical quarters, the 'revisionists' themselves being sometimes accused of trailing their coats provocatively. But surely, as economists can revise their projections upwards as well as downwards, there must also be times when historical revision can act positively, rather than negatively. Figures like Richard Chenevix Trench being a case in point. The leading figures of the Established Church of Ireland in the 19th century, such as Trench and Whately, his predecessor in the see of Dublin, fit uncomfortably into what has come to be accepted as the natural graph of Irish history, a path that leads inexorably towards national sovereignty. They tend to be sidelined: more because of what they were not (and could scarcely have been expected to be) than for what they were.

When Archbishop Trench delivered his first charge to his diocese in 1865 he conceded that, while a large part of his life had been spent in England, yet he belonged to Ireland by birth and descent, and to be a native of this city of Dublin. He also claimed that he was 'long since knit to Ireland by the dearest ties of my life (presumably a reference to his marriage to his cousin Frances Mary, of County Tipperary).

Richard Chenevix Trench was, indeed, born in Dublin, precisely two hundred years ago today, in North Frederick Street, a thoroughfare that has been described by modern authorities as having provided Rutland (what is now Parnell) Square with a more imposing access from the north. His uncle, Frederick Trench (the first Lord Ashtown) was one of the Wide Streets commissioners and an amateur architect, who had himself taken ten plots in the newly laid out street. The residents of North Frederick Street in the early decades of the nineteenth century were of mixed avocations, but there was a predominance of barristers (such as the future archbishop's father, Richard), and other legal figures. His mother, Melisina, a much travelled woman, who had been received at Napoleon's court, and whose journal was edited and published by her son, was by no means unsympathetic to political figures such as Henry Grattan, whom she described as 'perfectly simple, affectionate, and sublime', 'employing', as she put it, his last breath 'in pleading the cause of his Roman Catholic countrymen.' Her grandfather was Richard Chenevix, bishop of Waterford, whose great grandfather had quit France on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV and had eventually come to Ireland in 1743 as chaplain to the lord lieutenant, Lord Stanley. And, as was almost inevitably the case with viceregal chaplains, Chenevix soon became a bishop, first of Killaloe, and then of Waterford.

Richard Chenevix Trench's background was, therefore, a distinguished one. His formative years were spent in England, his father having moved there shortly after Richard's birth, his education being along the prestigious path that led from Harrow to Trinity College, Cambridge, to which he was admitted at the age of eighteen. The master was Christopher Wordsworth (the poet's brother) and soon Trench was numbered among the Apostles, so to speak, his associates including Tennyson and Hallam. Thackeray was another contemporary.

Shortly after graduation, he embarked on one of the more bizarre episodes of his life: though not perhaps totally unexpectedly, given the liberal views and urge to travel that he seems to have inherited from his mother. He set off for Spain in 1830, rather in the spirit of Byron's expedition to Greece at much the same time, with a group of idealistic volunteers determined to attack Cadiz in support of the ill-conceived and ineptly executed liberal revolution of Jose Torrijos. Gladstone was to describe Trench in years to come as a 'dreamer of dreams' , and undoubtedly this ill-fated expedition showed the romantic side of his nature. However, he returned home safely, to spend much time at Brockley Park, near Stradbally in Queen's County, as it then was, the period when he married Frances Mary Trench of Sopwell Hall in County Tipperary. Returning to England, he was ordained deacon in Norwich Cathedral in October 1832, and his first curacy was at Hadleigh, in Suffolk. Here again, he rubbed shoulders with men of influence, and it was here, during his curacy, that there took place one of the key events of the Oxford Movement, the Hadleigh Conference, as it has come to be called. Dean Church,the early chronicler of the Oxford Movement said that if Keble's Assize Sermon was the first 'word' of the movement, its first 'step' was taken by that small meeting of friends, convened by the rector of Hadleigh, Henry James Rose, held within days of Keble's fateful Oxford sermon. Rose played a prominent, if now largely forgotten, role among the early Tractarians. Another remarkable figure, under whom Trench served later, was the first bishop of Oxford, and then bishop of Winchester, Samuel Wilberforce.

Trench expressed himself 'glad to be quit of Ireland', when he was returning to England, and, in truth, so far as the Established Church was concerned, it was a bad time, what with widespread (and increasingly violent) agitation against the payment of tithes, and the huge implications of the Church Temporalities Act (which had, incidedntally, a major impact on this cathedral, greatly reducing its emoluments, and placing it under the authority of the Dean of St. Patrick's). Yet, while understandably glad to be at a distance from such turmoil, it is important to remember that some years later Trench travelled to Ireland to engage in famine relief with his cousin Frederick, rector of Cloughjordan. The two cousins set up 'eating- houses' (soup kitchens), working round the clock, at which 1,600 people were fed daily.Shortly after retirning to England, Trench succumbed to a serious fever. So far as his own property was concerned, in 1857 he was something of an improving landlord, and even though this was to involve some displacement of tenants, he was determined to carry out his plans 'with' as he put it, 'as gentle a hand and with as much thoughtfulness for individual cases as possible.'

Back in England, Trench's reputation as a theologian grew rapidly. He was special preacher at Cambridge in 1843, and when his Notes on the miracles of Our Lord was published in 1846 his place in the academic world was assured, so much so that he was invited to give the Huelson Lectures at Cambridge in 1845 and 1846, and in the latter year was appointed professor of divinity at King's College, London- the year in which the theology department opened, and the chair of which he held until his appointment to Westminster.

Another educational enterprise in which he played a leading role was the establishment of Queen Mary College, Harley Street, whose origins were a school for governesses, and which came to have a more ambitious objective 'for the instruction of ladies generally'. The governing body was chaired by FD Maurice, (a huge influence on Trench) and besides Trench included Charles Kingsley. Closely associated with it were two outstanding leaders of women's education, Dorothea Beale and Frances Mary Buss. It should therefore come as no surprise to us that the equally remarkable Mrs Anne Jellicoe was to find in Archbishop Trench a powerful friend and ally in the creation of Alexandra College and School, as Susan Parkes and Ann O'Connor have shown. Trench was the first Visitor to the College, and it was closely modelled on Queen Mary's College, London.

Trench was obviously a young man to watch, perhaps even better known for his poetry than for his theological writing. It was as dean of Westminster ( what the Dublin University Magazine called 'the blue riband of all ecclesiastical preferment' )to which he was appointed in 1856, that he can be said most to have made his mark in literary circles. Perhaps his chief legacy as dean of the minster was the introduction of what might be termed a 'popular' Sunday evening service. He wrote to his cousin (and agent) Thomas Cooke Trench 'Our evening service on the whole very successful-they (sic) are well attended by the poor-much better than the newspapers report'- and goes on to describe his satisfaction at the throngs of people filling the nave of the Abbey.

Trench was already publishing in his undergraduate days, the 1820s, though admittedly in a journal 'The Translator', which he edited and printed himself. As his obituarist in the Times wrote, he first attracted attention, not as a scholar of divinity, but as a poet. And while it could be said by an authority in 1967 that several of his theological works were still read, that is hardly the case today. Trench does, however, have a place in the current edition of the Oxford Companion to English Literature, , but, even more significant is the continued recognition of his pivotal role in the publication of the Oxford English Dictionary, first recorded in the first edition of 1888 , and where his part in bringing the dictionary into being is acknowledged.. The latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary puts it like this:

The history of this dictionary…goes back to November 1857, when Richard Chenevix Trench, then dean of Westminster, by calling attention to the deficiencies of existing English dictionaries, encouraged the Philological Society to make plans for the compilation of a new dictionary.

This remains, perhaps, Trench's main claim to fame internationally, as distinct from the service he gave to the Church of Ireland. As recently as 1989, a major treatise on philology devoted an entire chapter to 'Archbishop Trench's theory of language'. The Philological Society that Trench, dean of Westminster, joined in 1857, existed to promote the study of language, its structure and history, something that clearly fascinated Trench, not just because of its intrinsic worth, but also because he perceived the significant role played by language in transmitting ideas, not least theological ideas:

In the beginning was the Word with its purity assured; but not long after came the words exchanged between Adam and Eve that were to mark the beginning of that 'impure' language.

Trench also recognised the potent contribution made by language to the development of national consciousness in nineteenth century Europe. Language, he wrote, was a primary means of creating nationhood as it was the ideal means of signifying inclusion and exclusion. He quoted contemporary scholarship, maintaining that national awakening and the beginning of linguistic science went hand in hand. He subscribed to the doctrine that a language had within itself the history of a nation. Douglas Hyde would have agreed! But it was the English language that Trench had in mind. The study of that language, and not only its literature, was close to his heart, full as the English language was of what he called 'splendid anomalies'.'Paradise Lost is a noble possession for a people to have inherited, but the English tongue is a nobler heritage yet' He seems not to have considered that the very same arguments might seem to others to apply with equal force to cultural issues soon to be on his doorstep in Ireland. When he wrote that language was 'the embodiment, the incarnation, if I may so speak, of the feelings and thoughts and experience of a nation', he could have been arguing the case of the Young Irelanders or the Gaelic League.

Shortly after joining the Philological Society, Dean Trench addressed that body 'On some deficiencies in our dictionaries', prominent among those deficiencies being, in his view, that they neglected to trace back the usage of individual words historically, and that synonyms were insufficiently illustrated. The following year his paper was published and the Society's proposals for the publication of a new dictionary were announced. Volume I appeared two years later, under the imprint of the Clarendon Press.

I have already referred to Trench's relief that he was not working in Ireland in the 1830s. Little did he suspect then that he would find himself enmeshed in Irish politics, both national and ecclesiastical, some thirty years on, at another critical time for the Established Church.

His avowed claim to be a citizen of Dublin has already been mentioned, when as their new archbishop he was seeking to identify with his clergy. But the move to Dublin was not something that he relished, as he made clear in a letter to his friend and mentor Bishop Wilberforce. 'England is my world, the land of all my friends: the English church seems to feel full of life and hope and vigour, of which I see little in the Irish.' He also wrote of his genuine doubts as to his aptitude for episcopal authority, and pleaded with Wilberforce not to press his case. Whatever supporters such as Wilberforce may have thought, Trench, though clearly marked out for high office, was not everyone's choice for the see of Dublin. The lord lieutenant, Carlisle, wanted Fitzgerald of Killaloe to be appointed. In fact, Trench's name had been in the air in 1862 when Armagh became vacant. There had been a lively correspondence in the columns of the Dublin Evening Mail deploring the prospect of someone of such English provenance being appointed to the primacy. Trench must have been only too well aware of this controversy, as, of course the viceroy would have been, and Carlisle would surely have remembered comments by letter-writers such as the following: 'Dr Trench has selected England and an English university. He well deserves promotion; and Lord Palmerston [the prime minister] will have many opportunities of rewarding him in the sphere of duty he has chosen. In the event, Marcus Gervais Beresford was translated from Kilmore to Armagh, Trench being nominated for Dublin at the very end of the following year, 1863. Between his nomination and his consecration he wrote to his wife: '…it seems to me oftentimes so great a mistake to have left the little work for which I was not wholly unfitted and to have undertaken that great work for which I feel no fitness in myself.'

His first Dublin engagement, so to speak , was to attend the funeral of Dr Henry Pakenham at St Patrick's. As Pakenham had, under the terms of the Church Temporalities Act of 1833, also held the deanery of Christ Church, the new archbishop when he visited here he found a prevailing air of gloom, as the building was shrouded in mourning drapes, which he asked to have removed in time for his consecration. The black drapes can scarcely have been the only source of gloom: the cathedral was then in a state of advanced decay, and was on the eve of the major restoration that George Edmund Street was about to undertake between 1870 and 1878.

The preacher at Trench's consecration on 1 January 1864 in this as yet unrestored cathedral was Archdeacon Lee, a stalwart supporter of the archbishop, who was to take an even more pessimistic view than Trench's of disestablishment and Prayer Book revision. Deeming the consecration of a metropolitan of vital significance for the future interests of the church, the archdeacon reminded those in England who appeared to be indifferent to the interests of the Irish branch of the United Church that it was on Irish ground, as represented by the Irish church, that the English Reformation was brought face to face with the Church of Rome.

By then, the general synod of the newly-disestablished Church of Ireland (which wasn't altogether sure what to do with cathedrals, particularly the two in Dublin) had made the archbishop dean as well as ordinary of Christ Church. Nor did Trench regard the office of dean as a sinecure, and chapter meetings were generally held at the Palace at 16 St Stephen's Green (the cathedral undergoing major structural work ), and it is recorded that 'His Grace, the dean' presided. Under the new dispensation, a cathedral board came into existence, which shared in the administration of the cathedral with the chapter, and it was customary for the sub-dean to chair the meetings of the board. On the occasion of Archbishop Trench's retirement in 1885 the chapter expressed its warm appreciation of his commitment to the cathedral, particularly, as they put it, because since disestablishment he was 'surrounded by great trials and difficulties in his work'.

There had, of course, been equally burdensome years leading up to disestablishment, closely followed by the Prayer Book revision debates, and the Marrable episode, to which I shall come in a moment, and which itself was in a sense a reflection of the issues that dominated the revision process. The story of disestablishment has often been told, and not least how the Irish bishops declined to engage in negotiations with the government lest by doing so they might have been construed as having conceded their case, which, at its most extreme, was expressed in the house of lords by the bishop of Tuam who quite simply deemed the separation of church and state as 'a national sin'. Gladstone, the advocate of disestablishment, and Trench were well acquainted with one another. The prime minister had read, and indeed annotated, Trench's book On the study of words, when it first appeared in 1851, and the editor of the Gladstone diaries noted that a decade earlier Trench's name occurred in a pencilled list 'probably for prayers' at the back of one notebook. Gladstone also recorded in 1863 having heard a 'most admirable sermon from Dr Trench'. Some years later, when both men had attained high office, and had confronted one another over disestablishment, the prime minister's attitude to the archbishop (and indeed to the Irish church leadership in general) was one of exasperation. This was when, in 1869, only months away from the Irish Church Bill receiving the royal assent, he described Trench as 'a dreamer of dreams; and talking of negotiating at a time when all negotiation will have gone by. It was at this period that Trench wrote to his cousin: 'The breach between Gladstone and all his old friends is very wide, and he must feel it, I think, very deeply'. Yet, to run ahead a little, there is evidence that Gladstone's regard for Trench endured, and when in 1877, out of office for the time being, he called at the Palace in Dublin he wrote in his diary : 'We were concerned to find that excellent man worse and still suffering(presumably a reference to an injury Trench had sustained on disembarking from the boat from England two years previously): 'in an entourage', Gladstone commented, 'I fear, little worthy of him.' They were to meet, briefly, two days later at the city hall, when Gladstone received the freedom of Dublin, and where he admired Chantrey's statue of Grattan and had a short conversation with the archbishop.

By virtue of his office, Trench sat in the house of lords. But infrequently, as he admitted when he spoke there during the second reading debate on the Irish Church Bill. He had, he said, only assisted at their debates at 'a somewhat late period', though he did speak at length on that occasion (filling twenty columns of Hansard) and dealing meticulously with many amendments, largely to do with the financial interests of the clergy. He made his final appearance in the lords on 22 July 1869, voting against a commons amendment, and the bill received the royal assent from Queen Victoria (grudgingly, as we know), four days later. The Irish bishops (or, to be more accurate, their successors) lost their right to sit in the upper house under the new legislation, having made it clear that they had no intention of struggling to retain their seats..

Now that the die was cast, Trench threw himself vigorously into the process of reconstruction that faced the newly-disestablished Church of Ireland. A unique source for tracing his thinking in these years is his correspondence with his cousin, Thomas Cooke Trench, now in the RCB Library, and which gives considerable insight into his views and actions both official and personal. His great concern was lest the Church of Ireland's newly-devised form of governance would damage what in his view were its credentials as part of Catholic Christendom. The danger, as he saw it, came from elements within the church, rather than from the politicians. As he said in his visitation charge of September 1871, 'we do not here believe in the infallibility of popes; we believe as little in the infallibility of general synods. And what about the infallibility of Lambeth conferences? This may be an appropriate point at which to refer to the fact that the first Lambeth Conference took place in 1867. Trench was a participant, serving on several committees. The invitation to attend, from Archbishop Longley of Canterbury (who died the following year, incidentally), was extended to those bishops 'in visible communion with the United Church of England and Ireland. But, in fact, there was considerable debate and acrimony about who should be there. Not, as we now see, for the last time!

The: reconstruction of the Church of Ireland, as Trench emphasised in his visitation charge, was not taking place on a green field site. Rather, on a site 'heaped with the shattered materials of a past which has perished.' (In this same address he made a point that will not be lost on today's hearers, that cathedrals 'appealed to sympathies which are not universal', and that therefore special funding for their support was required. ) Again and again in his visitation charges and in his correspondence, he shows himself to be highly practical (as well as personally generous)in matters financial, especially where the welfare of the clergy was concerned. But his overriding anxiety was for the theological and liturgical integrity of the Church of Ireland.

As the formulation of a constitution for the church engaged his close attention (and correspondence with Thomas Cooke Trench is splendidly illustrative of the point), the archbishop's conviction that the bishops held the key to preserving that integrity became more and more pronounced: and things would come to a head, where he was concerned, at the diocesan synod, for he was 'tolerably certain' that the Dublin clergy would not agree to an episcopal veto. He was equally certain that he personally would never surrender a right held for the whole church, of which he considered himself merely a trustee. His cousin urged him to hold fast: could not the bishops speak out and say that the church shall not be narrowed nor her doctrine abandoned to gratify the passion of an intolerant mob?

This may sound to our ears somewhat intemperate language. But, in fact what approximated very closely to mob violence was to be seen in the reactions in parts of the country, and indeed parts of the city of Dublin, to what was perceived by some to be incipient ritualism. Bishop Richard Clarke in his study of prayer book revision suggests that Trench's influence was less effective than might have been the case due to the fact that his extreme pessimism and indeed tactlessness, somewhat prevented his carrying the church with him.

The archbishop's position was that of a moderate high-churchman. His tolerance of what were deemed to be 'ritualistic tendencies' at the newly-created parish of St Bartholomew's (whose pulpit he presented, and whose abandonment of the practice of pew-rents the applauded) earned him the title 'Puseyite Trench'. He wrote : ' Most days bring me in now one or two abusive letters….I am pretty nearly sick of being dragged at Dawson's heels (Arthur Dawson, vicar of St Bartholomew's) through the dirt of an Irish mob- all for matters which I do not care two straws about'- a reference to the fact that the controversy had to do with the externals, so to speak, of the liturgy. As Bishop Clarke has pointed out, while not a follower of Newman, Trench was certainly sympathetic to aspects of Tractarianism. He was a member of the Keble Memorial Committee (which planned the new Keble College, Oxford) and attended its meetings there. Likewise, he let it be known that he considered some of the canons ecclesiastical that came with the revised Book of Common Prayer of 1878 to be so petty 'as to provoke being broken'. In support of this view, he quoted his predecessor, Archbishop Whately: 'Wide will wear, but tight will tear'. (Whately's churchmanship was by no means identical with Trench's, and Trench was surprised to find no chapel in the Palace when he came to Dublin. )

His experience of anti-ritualism and other anti-Roman activity was followed closely by the Marrable case of 1870, which arose over the archbishop's refusal to condemn a devotional manual presented by the curate of St Stephen's to one of Mr Marrable's servants. Trench's action (or refusal to take action) led to a storm in the conservative press, and undoubtedly contributed to the heated atmosphere in which the debate on Prayer Book revision was conducted. It is not then to be wondered at that the archbishop, a sensitive man- as many tactless people are- could be seen as morose, given his temperament and the times that he lived through. Thomas Cooke Trench expressed great sympathy with him, 'upon whom the chief weight has fallen and must yet fall'. There must also be taken into account the great personal tragedies he endured in the deaths of two of his sons, and he himself was subject to considerable physical pain for the last ten years of his life following the fall on board ship to which I have already referred.

He was generous with his fairly considerable wealth - and in passing, it may be remarked that his income from his publisherin one particular year amounted to £700, would in contemporary values, be the envy of many modern authors. But he took precautions when disbursing funds. He sent 'my little Christmas gift', as he called it, to the parishes each year, taking care in one or two cases that the money went to the rector personally, when he foresaw that the select vestry 'would probably set itself in direct hostility to the clergyman'. And when he made a donation to the Representative Church Body's newly-established Central Sustentation Fund his contribution was so designed that 'should the Church of Ireland turn out after all to be no church, but only a Protestant sect', his sacrifice would be minimal, for he made the gift over a term of years, reserving the right to stop it at any time.

I feel conscious that the sketch that I have attempted to give of Archbishop Richard Chenevix Trench falls short of what a true likeness would be. In particular, I have done less than credit to his theological and literary reputation in his day, however that may have been overtaken by time, and have shown him as rather prelatical and political figure.

Perhaps I can redress the balance somewhat by drawing on a sermon he preached at the consecration of the church of St Michael and All Angels, Clane, County Kildare, on Michaelmas Day 1883, its patronal festival. The entire building was the gift of his cousin and confidant, Thomas Cooke Trench, the communion table being the archbishop's gift, and the altar cloth and linen being the gift of Mrs Cooke Trench. The choir of St Bartholomew's assisted, pending the establishment of a 'surpliced' choir. Archbishop Trench's words on that occasion bring out something of his pastoral instincts and his poetical nature, and think he ought to have the last word, or at least the penultimate word.

His text was taken from Matthew xxvi, 8: 'To what purpose is this waste' (the disciples' indignant reaction to the action of the woman who had anointed Jesus's head with ointment) …'
'let us pray earnestly', said the archbishop, that not now only but so long as this goodly house endures, long after we have passed away, Christ may be here preached, in the fullness of his grace, in the power of his sacraments, in the fullness of his redeeming love, in his readiness to heal, in all his mightiness to save. Let us pray that careless hearts may be here aroused, and weary may find rest, and wounded may find healing; that Christ on his cross, Christ set forth evidently crucified among you, may draw many to him, many as the doves to their windows, to find their refuge and their shelter in his wounded side…This was as the Beautiful Gate to the Heavenly Temple.

There are three memorials to Richard Chenevix Trench here at Christ Church. The most inconspicuous is the carved head, together with those of the then archbishop of Armagh, Street the architect and Roe the benefactor, that adorns the first arcade on the south side of the nave A fine brass memoria lwas erected in the chancel in 1888. Berst of all, I suggest is Sir Thomas Jones's splendid portrait of the archbishop, hanging close bypn the song school staitrs, which catches Trench's character and his temperament much better than any words of mine could do. It is part of the Dublin episcopal portrait collection, vested in the Representative Church Body, which has arranged for it to be restored in honour of to-day's commemoration. The work has been splendidly carried out by Ciara Brennan, whom we are happy to have with us. I suggest that the nearest we can get to a sense of Richard Chenevix Trench, the person and the prelate, is by studying that fine portrait, and I commend it to you.

Kenneth Milne