3 (p. 7). ‘Sacerdos’: ‘Priest’.
4 (p. 11). Danton: Georges Danton (1759–94), prominent member of the Jacobin Club, the most radical and egalitarian group of revolutionaries during the French Revolution. He was a powerful speaker, and defended himself eloquently against the charge of betraying the republic when brought to trial by Robespierre.
5 (p. 11). Argus: A hundred-eyed giant in Greek mythology.
6 (p. 12). shovel hat: A broad-brimmed hat, turned up at the sides and resembling a shovel in shape, worn by Anglican clergymen.
7 (p. 12). robe de nuit: Nightgown.
8 (p. 12). bishops without their aprons: An apron is part of the official dress of a bishop.
9 (p. 12). dishabille: Undress.
10 (p. 13). it is as an archdeacon that he shines: An archdeacon is nominated by the bishop and presides over a part of the diocese, the archdeaconry, in which he is expected to supervise the clergy and ecclesiastical property. In his short book Clergymen of the Church of England (1866), Trollope describes an archdeacon as ‘a bishop in little’ (p. 45).
11 (p. 14). to forgive his brother even seven times: See Luke vi, 29: ‘And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also’; and Matthew xviii, 21–2: ‘Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.’
12 (p. 14). the sacrilegious doings of Lord John Russell: (1792–1878), Whig politician and advocate of political and ecclesiastical reform. Anticlerical, hostile to the Anglo-Catholic doctrines of the Oxford Movement (see Chapter 15, note 19), and favourable to liberal theology, Russell’s conduct during his periods as Home Secretary (1835–9) and Prime Minister (1846–52) won him the distrust of conservative High Churchmen like Archdeacon Grantly. He was in favour of appropriating the surplus revenues of the Established Church in Ireland to finance social reform there, he supported the redistribution of revenues within the Church of England, and in 1850 he set up a Royal Commission of inquiry into the condition of Oxford University, at that time a stronghold of the High Church party.
13 (p. 15). protégée: One protected, aided or supported by another.
14 (p. 17). six and eightpence: One third of a pound in pre-decimal currency, the standard rate at the time for a simple legal transaction.
CHAPTER 3
1 (p. 18). St Cecilia: Roman martyr and patron saint of music.
2 (pp. 19–20). constitutional visitor: i.e. the clergyman appointed under the terms of John Hiram’s will to supervise the running of the hospital and correct abuses.
3 (p. 20). favourite little bit of Bishop’s: Henry Rowley Bishop (1786–1855), English composer and conductor. He was the first British musician to be knighted, in 1842.
4 (p. 22). pony-chair: Light two-wheeled carriage similar to a chaise, here drawn by ponies.
5 (p. 23). appanage: A perquisite; piece of preferment hereditarily in the gift of the Bishop of Barchester.
6 (p. 27). distribute all tithes… cowls, sandals, and sackcloth!: The bishop’s comically exaggerated fears envisage an assault on the privileged position of the Church of England: the distribution of tithes, the tenth part of the produce or income of a parish originally levied for support of the Anglican Church and clergy, to nonconformists; the abolition of the ‘sacred bench’ of bishops in the House of Lords; and the proscription of the traditional clerical dress of shovel hats (see Chapter 2, note 6) and the lawn, or fine linen sleeves of the bishop’s robe. The ‘cowls, sandals, and sackcloth’ are the dress of monastic orders, suppressed by an unenforced Act of Parliament dating from Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
CHAPTER 4
1 (p. 28). ‘fiat justitia ruat cœlum’: ‘Let justice be done, though the heavens should fall’.
2 (p. 29). non compos mentis: Not of sound mind.
3 (p. 34). by goles: By golly.
CHAPTER 5
1 (p. 37). he’s in the house: i.e. the House of Commons.
2 (p. 37). that scoundrel Horseman about the Bishop of Beverly’s income: Edward Horsman (1807–76), one of the Established Church’s fiercest critics in the House of Commons. He attacked Lord John Russell’s ecclesiastical policy (see Chapter 2, note 12) as being too favourable to the bishops, and in 1847 moved a vote of censure on the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. Beverley was an old Anglo-Saxon see, but no longer occupied by an Anglican bishop.
3 (p. 37). that fellow at Rochester: Robert Whiston: see Introduction and Chapter 2, note 2.
4 (p. 37). the spirit of Sir Benjamin Hall give way: Sir Benjamin Hall (1802–67), another fierce Parliamentary critic of the Established Church, who published open letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury and others attacking abuses of Church patronage and the mismanagement of Church property.
5 (p. 38). Jewel’s library: John Jewel (1522–71), became Bishop of Salisbury in 1560 and built a library for the cathedral.
6 (p. 46). that wretched clerical octogenarian Croesus: The Earl of Guilford: see Introduction and Chapter 2, note 1. Croesus was the last king of Lydia in the sixth century BC and a man of legendary wealth.
7 (p. 46). brougham: A closed carriage driven by a single horse, named after Lord Brougham (1778–1868).
CHAPTER 6
1 (p. 49). consolation of a Roman: That of having put the requirements of justice and the public good before personal interests. See note 2 below.
2 (p. 51). the Barchester Brutus: Lucius Junius Brutus, who helped to found the Roman republic at the end of the sixth century BC and was renowned for his strict sense of justice. He condemned his two sons to death for treason.
3 (p. 51). mad reforms even at Oxford: In 1850 Lord John Russell set up a Royal Commission to inquire into the condition of clerically-dominated Oxford University, which reported in 1852 and recommended reforms.
4 (p. 52). Apollo: Greek god of light, poetry, music and healing, and a symbol of masculine beauty.
5 (p. 52). prebendaries: A prebendary is a canon who enjoys a prebend, or stipend, attached to a particular stall or seat in a cathedral, in return for which he is required to officiate at stated times.
6 (p. 53). short whist: The English version of Whist, the most popular of card games before the advent of Bridge, which developed out of it. There are two pairs of partners and thirteen tricks to each deal. Each trick taken after six scores one point; a game is won by the first side to score five points, and a rubber by the first to win two games. The four top trumps, Ace, King, Queen and Jack, are honours, and these are scored at the end of the hand after tricks have been taken; if one side holds all four honours, they score four points, if three, two points. To win a treble, which carries three game points, one side must take five or more points to zero. Trollope’s mock-heroic treatment of the game, like the preceding account of the dance, echoes Pope’s Rape of the Lock (1714).
7 (p. 53). marks a treble under the candlestick. The following note on the scoring was provided by David Parlett, author of The Penguin Book of Card Games, to whom I am very grateful. ‘The archdeacon and his partner had already won the first hand by 7–6, so gaining one point for “the odd trick last time”. They now win the second by 8–5, earning two more game points for tricks: in addition, they score two for honours, having held three of the top trumps between them. (All, that is, save the queen, attention being drawn to the fact that she lay – “comfort-giving” and “cherished” – in the doctor’s hand.) Thus brought to five game points, the archdeacon and his partner win a treble by virtue of the fact that their opponents scored none.’
8 (p. 54). ‘three and thirty points!’: Presumably the winning margin of the archdeacon and his partner, arrived at by subtracting the losers’ game points in the rubbers from the winners’.
CHAPTER 7
1 (p. 59). the daily ‘Jupiter’: As discussed in the Introduction, the Jupiter is based on
The Times, then known as ‘The Thunderer’ (an epithet given to Zeus or Jupiter in classical mythology) because of the magisterial and, at that time, generally reformist pronouncements of its leader columns.
2 (p. 60). Addison: Joseph Addison (1672–1719), poet, essayist and politician. The essays he wrote for the Spectator (1711–12) were long considered to be models of English prose style, in their urbanity, clarity and respect for good sense.
3 (p. 60). Junius: The pseudonymous author of a series of trenchant newspaper letters which appeared from 1769 to 1772, attacking the political misconduct of George III and his ministers.
4 (p. 62). ‘Convent Custody Bill’: A reference to the ‘Recovery of Personal Liberty in Certain Cases’ Bill, introduced by Thomas Chambers on 10 May 1853. Its purpose was to provide for the release of women allegedly restrained against their will in Roman Catholic convents, and proposed that the Home Secretary ‘should have the power of appointing one or more persons, where there were reasonable grounds to infer the exercise of coercion and restraint towards any female anywhere, to go, in company with a justice of the peace, to the house, see the party, ascertain the facts, and, if necessary, put the ordinary law in force by writ of habeas corpus’ (Annual Register, 1853, p. 113). The Bill was given a second reading on 22 June 1853, when an amendment was moved that it be referred to a select committee, but it was never enacted. Coming at the time of ‘Papal Aggression’, when Protestant feeling was running high as a result of the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy to England and Wales in 1850, it was a provocative measure and had the predictable effect of dividing Irish Protestant and Catholic members. The Times supported it.
CHAPTER 8
1 (p. 64). the bench of bishops: The twenty-six bishops entitled to sit in the House of Lords.
2 (p. 64). worreted: worried.
3 (p. 64). Charles James: Each of the archdeacon’s sons is named after a well-known contemporary bishop, Charles James after C. J. Blomfield (1786–1857), at that time Bishop of London. He was a man of great practical energy but, like his fictional namesake, had the reputation of being remote and a trimmer: ‘In an age of partisans neither side could count on his support’ (Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church, Part I (A. & C. Black, 1966), p. 133).
4 (p. 65). Henry: After Henry Philpotts (1778–1869), Bishop of Exeter, the most pugnacious champion of the conservative cause on the bench of bishops. An unrelenting fighter and opponent of reform, he was burnt in effigy by a crowd which attacked his palace at the time of the Reform Bill debates in 1831. The remark that Henry Grantly ‘was inclined to be a bully’ refers to Philpotts’s reputation for harassing the clergy of his diocese on matters of doctrine, which was fresh in the public mind because of his refusal in 1847 to institute the Rev. G. C. Gorham to the living of Brampford Speke on account of Gorham’s Low Church views on baptism. The issue is a cause célèbre of Victorian Church history, and was eventually decided in Gorham’s favour by the judicial committee of the Privy Council in 1850.
5 (p. 65). Luther the reformer… Capuchin friar to the very life: i.e. Henry could act with equal skill the part of Protestant reformer or Catholic friar. Trollope probably intends a reference to Philpotts’s love of controversy and versatility in argument rather than to any flexibility in doctrine, for Philpotts remained consistent in both his Toryism and his High Church beliefs.
6 (p. 66). dear little Soapy: The archdeacon’s third son is named after another conservative High Churchman, Samuel Wilberforce (1805–73), who was Bishop of Oxford from 1845 to 1869. His smoothness of manner and reputed evasiveness on tricky issues earned him the nickname ‘Soapy Sam’.
7 (p. 69). Rabelais… Panurge: Panurge is a character in Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–52), the chief work of the French humorous writer and satirist François Rabelais (1494?–1553). His writings were considered coarse and indecent in the Victorian period.
8 (p. 69). attorney-general: Senior law officer and chief legal adviser to the Crown in England and Wales.
9 (p. 71). all the skill of Bramah or of Chubb: Famous locksmiths. Joseph Bramah (1748–1814) invented a lock which was reputedly unpickable, until picked by an American at the Great Exhibition of 1851. Charles Chubb (1772–1846) founded the firm of Chubb and Sons, which made his brand of patent locks.
CHAPTER 9
1 (p. 75). ipsissima verba: The very words.
2 (p. 79). it has taken up the case… against half a dozen bishops: The Times had not only taken the reformer’s side in the St Cross and Rochester affairs, it had also, as discussed in the Introduction, conducted something of a campaign in 1853 against the Bishop of Salisbury, accusing him of misappropriating the revenues of his see to the extent of £24,318 over a fourteen-year period.
CHAPTER 10
1 (p. 85) the Quakers and Mr Cobden… in aid of the Emperor of Russia: Richard Cobden (1804–65) and his friend the Quaker John Bright (1811–89) were radical leaders prominent in opposing the war with Russia in the Crimea which broke out in 1854.
2 (p. 85). Tom Towers: Although this is a highly topical novel, and the Jupiter is based on The Times, Tom Towers is not in any sense intended as a personal portrait of the then editor, John Delane (1817–79). In his Autobiography Trollope wrote that ‘living away in Ireland, I had not even heard the name of any gentleman connected with the Times newspaper, and could not have intended to represent any individual by Tom Towers’ (Chapter 5).
3 (p. 89). not if all Oxford were to convocate together: A reference to the Oxford Convocation, the legislative assembly of the university, which could and did pronounce on ecclesiastical issues at this time.
CHAPTER 11
1 (p. 90). an Agamemnon worthy of an Iphigenia?: Iphigenia was sacrificed to the goddess Artemis at Aulis in order to dispel the opposing winds which were preventing the Greeks, under her father Agamemnon, sailing to Troy.
2 (p. 90). not so had Jephthah’s daughter saved her father: In Judges xi Jephthah vows that he will sacrifice the first person who comes out of his house to greet him on returning home, if God will give him victory over the Ammonites. He wins the battle, but the first to meet him is his daughter, his only child, who submits to be sacrificed so that her father may not break his vow.
3 (p. 91). triste: Sad.
CHAPTER 12
1 (p. 102). the Lydian school of romance: After Lydia Languish in Sheridan’s play The Rivals (1775), who is perversely disappointed when the penniless lover with whom she hopes to elope, Ensign Beverley, turns out to be Captain Absolute the wealthy suitor chosen for her by her aunt.
2 (p. 103). the archdeacon’s glebe: Land granted to a clergyman as part of his living.
3 (p. 104). sanctum sanctorum: Holy of holies; hence a very private place.
4 (p. 104). opposition to the consecration of Dr Hampden: Renn Dickson Hampden (1793–1868) was a liberal theologian who angered High Churchmen by what they saw as his hostility to the dogmatic element in Christianity and by his pamphlet, Observations on Religious Dissent (1834), which argued that nonconformists ought to be admitted to Oxford and allowed to attend Anglican worship. When he was made Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford in 1836 there was an outcry, led by Newman and other High Churchmen, and another in 1847 when he was nominated Bishop of Hereford by Lord John Russell.
5 (p. 104). Chrysostom… Dr Philpotts: Famous Church leaders who, like Archdeacon Grantly, had been involved in one way or another with the problem of the relations between Church and State. St Chrysostom (347?–407) was Archbishop of Constantinople (398–404), where his attempt to reform the city won him the hostility of the Empress Eudoxia and led to his banishment. St Augustine could be either the Church Father Augustine of Hippo (354–430), author of the famous Confessions and De Civitate Dei, an influential treatise on the philosophy of history and the relations of Church and State, or the Roman monk (d. 604) who converted the English to Christianity and became the first Archbishop of Canterbury (601–4).
St Thomas à Beckett (1118–70), Archbisho
p of Canterbury (1162–70), was murdered at the instigation of King Henry II for resisting the king’s attempts to extend royal control over the Church. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (1474?–1530) became Archbishop of York in 1514 and Henry VIII’s Lord Chancellor in 1515; he was successful in foreign affairs until he failed to achieve papal approval for Henry’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, and in 1530 he was arrested for high treason, dying on his way to London to face trial. William Laud (1573–1645) was Charles II’s Archbishop of Canterbury from 1633; a vigorous proponent of High Church principles and practices, and a persecutor of Puritans, he was impeached by the Long Parliament and executed. Laudian Anglicanism maintained that the Roman Catholic and Anglican communions were both part of a single Catholic Church, and was the ideal standard to which Victorian High Churchmen and Tractarians looked back in their attempts to revive the Catholic heritage of the Church of England. For Dr Philpotts see Chapter 8, note 4.
6 (p. 107). phasis: Aspect.
CHAPTER 13
1 (p. 115). tithes: Originally a tenth part of the produce or income of a parish, levied to support the Anglican Church and clergy.
2 (p. 115). prebendal stall: A stall, or seat, in a cathedral to which a prebend, or stipend, was traditionally attached. Dr Stanhope enjoys a non-resident prebend, having deputed his cathedral duties to another clergyman. This was a form of clerical sinecure which the Dean and Chapter Act of 1840 was designed to abolish, although it allowed the Dr Stanhopes of the day to retain a life-interest in their prebendal stalls.
CHAPTER 14
1 (p. 118). Mount Olympus: The highest mountain in Greece and home of the gods in Greek mythology, from the top of which Zeus (Jupiter in Roman mythology) hurled his thunderbolts.
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