Part 1 - Origins
Today "High Churchman" is widely considered to be a synonym for Anglo-Catholic, but in truth the two movements are quite distinct even though they have some common aims and attitudes.
The High Church movement within the Anglican Church has its origins in the later sixteenth century. As the dust began to settle after the most active phase of the English Reformation, so the Anglican Church began to develop a theology and liturgical life of its own.
When Elizabeth I (1533-1603) came to the throne in 1558 she had Parliament and Convocation establish a broadly Protestant national church which retained the structures of the Catholic Church. The English Reformation did not have a single dominating figure, but it did share the common aim of all the reformed Churches of returning to the faith and practice of the Early Church. This expressed itself in a reverence for the Early Fathers, and a retention of not only the structures of the mediaeval Church, but also in the use of a Reformed liturgy.
The 39 Articles and the Book of Common Prayer set the Church's theological and liturgical boundaries, but putting "meat on the bones" of the Elizabethan settlement fell to the generation of theologians that grew up in the 1560s and 70s. Initially the task fell to igh Church Calvinists such as John Jewel, and John Whitgift (1530-1604), but within a generation another theological school was becoming prominent. Its two most prominent of figures were Richard Hooker 1554-1600, and Lancelot Andrewes 1555-1626.
Hooker's magisterial "Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity" has a foot in both camps. It defended the Elizabethan standard of High Church Calvinism coupled with liturgical worship and apostolic order, and looked forward to the "Arminian" theology of the next generation. In its orderliness, and methodology it was to be the basis of Anglican thinking for the next one hundred-fifty years. Hooker sees the basis of Anglican theology as being - first and foremost - the Scriptures, but in order to undertstand them correctly, one has to listen to both antiquity and right reason. By the 1660s all parties within Anglicanism accepted the wisdom of Hooker's position.
Lancelot Andrewes is, in some sense, the first of the clearly High Church figures in Anglicanism to attain to the national stae. He coupled a love of sacramental worship with a theology that derived from the Greek Fathers. Andrewes was the son of a merchant engaged in the Baltic trade and a gifted linguist. Educated at Cambridge, he was ordained in 1578. He seems to have influenced by Barrett and Baro, two Cambridge dons expelled from the University for their failure to uphold the Calvinist orthodoxy of the day. Initially, Andrewes ministry centred on London first as a City rector, then as Canon of St. Paul's, Dean of Westminster, and finally - after a stint as Bishop of Ely - as Bishop of Winchester. During the later years of Elizabeth I he became a great court preacher. This celebrity only increase during the reign of James VI & I. In all Andrewes preached regularly at court for some thirty years. His theology was steeped in the Eastern Fathers of the Church, and was deeply sacramental. But his influence ran deeper as he was the means by which other High Churchmen came to the notice of the King.
Part II - The Laudians
In the later years of James VI & I's reign, leadership of the High Church group seems to have passed first to Richard Neile (1562-1640) and later to William Laud (1572-1645). Both Neile and Laud were men of business not speculative theologians, who had come to the King's attention through their links with Bishops Andrewes and Overall. Although they shared Bishop Andrewes' anti-Calvinist theology and High Sacramentalism, they did not share his purely academic interest in the Eastern Fathers. Instead they set about raising the standard of public worship in the Church of England, enforcing rules about using the surplice and clerical dress, commanding that altar rails to be set up, and restoring the Holy Table - which they often called an altar - to its old position at the east end of the Chancel. Laud and Charles I also encouraged the Scottish Bishops to produce a Prayer Book of their own. When this project was completed in 1637 it provoked a riot. These developments irritated the Puritan element, so that when the tensions between the King and the Merchantile classes exploded into Civil War, the ceremonial innovations of the Laudians became a soft target for Puritan propaganda, and anger.
Cromwellian treatment of the Laudians was predictably harsh. Episcopacy and the Prayer Book were abolished in 1645. Archbishop Laud was executed, Bishop Wren languished in the Tower for eighteen years, and many of the brightest stars of the Laudian Church were driven into exile. Yet among the many failures of the Cromwellian dictatorship was not only the failure to produce a stable form of government, but the failure to produce a stable national Church. It was almost inevitable when Charles II was restored on the 29th May 1660 that the old Church of England would be restored along with him thus ending the Cromwelian vacuum in both State and Church.
In matters of religion, the Restoration Settlement was almost a case of business as usual. Plans for a major revision of the BCP along the lines of the abortive Scottish BCP were scuttled early on, and, apart from a few minor amendments, the BCP of 1559 was restored. About 2000 Cromwellian ministers were ejected from their livings in 1662 for refusal to seek Episcopal ordination or failure to use the BCP, but on the whole the re-establishment of the Church of England happened with remarkably little disruption or commotion.
There is little doubt that the Restoration Church of England was dominated by the old Laudians who felt they had emerged triumphant from the time of trial. The Church was adorned by many eminent scholars, the music of Henry Purcell, and the architecture of Sir Christopher Wren, who was nephew to the Bishop Wren who had been imprisoned for 18 years by Parliament. However, this flowering of High Church Anglicanism lasted only about 25 years, and was brought to a rapid close by the accession of William and Mary in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Charles II had converted to Romanism on his death bed, but his brother and successor - James, Duke of York - had been openly Catholic since 1672. This had provoked the Exclusion Crisis in which Whigs and ories did battle over the fate of the monarchy. Tories favoured James' succession to the throne, whilst Whigs favoured his exclusion in favour of a Protestant Stewart. After his accession as James VII (of Scotland) and II (of England) he began to openly favour his co-religionists, and by granting freedom of worship hoped to gain the support of Protestant dissenters against the Church of England. However, the king's refusal to maintain the traditional rights and privileges of the Church, civic corporations, and other influential groups produced both Monmouth's failed Rebellion of 1685 and the successful Glorious Revolution of 1688. On November 5th 1688 William of Orange landed in Torbay and within six weeks James II had fled and the throne was declared vacant.
Many of the most able High Churchmen - including William Sancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury - resigned their posts rather than accept the deposing of the Catholic King James VII and II. However, several other prominent High Churchmen, including Henry Compton "The Protestant Bishop" of London, and John Sharp, who was soon to be Archbishop of York, supported the revolution. William was a Calvinist and appointed several bishops sympathetic to attempts to reintegrate Presbyterians into the Church of England, whilst Scotland he rewarded the Covenanter Lords by disestablishing the Scottish Episcopal Church, and establishing Presbyterianism in its place. However, after Wiliam died childless in 1702, he was followed by the High Church daughter of James II, Queen Anne. Anne favoured the Tories, promoted many High Churchmen within the Church of England, and granted toleration to the Scottish Episcopal Church.
However, the resurgence of the High Churchmen was to be shortlived as Anne also died without surviving issue in 1714, to be succeeded by an obscure and boorish German Cousin.
The complicity of several leading Tories and High Churchmen in the Jacobite rebellions of both 1715 and 1745 cast a cloud over the High Church party under both first two Georges. However, Oxford educated parish priests tend to be Tories and a hefty percentage of them were also High Churchmen. The High Churchmen were down, but not out. The gradual demise of the direct line Stuart dynasty thanks to the homosexuality of Bonnie Prince Charlie left Henry, Cardinal Stuart as the only strong Stuart claimant for the throne from 1788 until his death in 1809. This started throw the weight of legitimatist Toryism behind the Hannoverians bringing both the Tories and the High Churchmen back into favour under George III.
As George III's long reign unfolded so the High Churchmen increasingly dominated the hierarchy of the Church of England. Three successive Archbishops of Canterbury were High Churchmen: John Moore (1783-1805), Charles Manners-Sutton (1805-28), and William Howley (1828-48); whilst York was held by a couple of colourless Tories: William Markham (1777-1807) and Edward Vernon Venables Harcourt (1807-47). The Church of England's hierarchy was gradually becoming "High and Dry" (or as they were even less respectfully known "Two-bottle Orthodox") in character.
However, the High Churchmen began to initiate some moderate reforms. In the 1810s competitive examinations were introduced at Oxford and Cambridge Universities which improved the academic standard of those entering the ministry. As a thank offering for victory in the Napoleonic wars, the High Church Lord Liverpool persuaded parliament to vote one million pounds for the construction of new churches. There was also an increasing emphasis on clergymen being resident in their parishes and involved in parish life. It was on these stirrings of reform that the great Church revival of the 19th century stemmed.
Part III. America
For the most part the Anglican Establishments in Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina were fairly colorless theologically. However, from the 1680s there were an increasing number of Anglican chaplaincies in New England where the establishment was Congregationalist. As a result of popular hostility to Anglicanism, the New England Churchmen tended to emphasize what differentiated their Church from that of the Congregationalists. The disestablishment of the Scottish Episcopal Church in 1689 led to some displaced Scots priests coming to the Colonies who had a firm grasp of "Church principles" - the Church as a divine institution, the importance of the sacraments, litugical worship, and of Episcopacy as the Scriptural form of Church government. These ideas were just beginning to be called "High Church" though they had been widespread in the Church of England and the Scottish Episcopal Church since the 1620s. The High Church leanings of New England were strengthened by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel's support for the Church in New England and New York.
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