by Miles Taylor
Defender of the Faith
If politicians were keen to dampen down expectations about the new queen in India, there was one section of British society for whom Victoria was the rising star: the evangelical church. As Charles Blomfield, the Bishop of London, described her at her coronation, she was ‘called to the seat of imperial power in all the freshness and fulness of youthful hope and promise’. For Sydney Smith, canon at St Paul’s, she was a ‘patriot queen’, albeit a Whig one – for religious toleration at home and peace abroad.30 Some of the first acts of Victoria’s reign signalled her status as Defender of the Faith in the Empire. On the eve of their departure, she met with India’s two new bishops: George Spencer (Madras) and Thomas Carr (Bombay), and issued a ‘Letters Patent’ authorising the expansion of the activities of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, one of the Church of England’s leading missionary organisations.31 There was more than dry formality to this. Victoria was at her most evangelical in these years. The Bishop of London, responsible for the overseas dioceses of the Anglican church and a keen supporter of Christian conversion of subject peoples, was Victoria’s bishop, especially when she was resident at Buckingham Palace. He preached her coronation sermon. Her journals record him frequently in attendance at court, and also her enjoyment of his sermons. There were other early signals of her evangelicalism. Never a great reader, she spent a good part of the autumn of 1838 working her way through the biography of William Wilberforce, the hero of the campaign against the slave trade, but also the leading light of the Clapham Sect, which did so much to expand the Anglican mission overseas, including to India.32
In India the missionary churches of Britain had made great strides in the quarter century since they were allowed into the Company’s territories. The see of Calcutta (1813), was subdivided in the mid-1830s to create Anglican bishops for Madras and Bombay. By then Protestant missions had been particularly successful in establishing stations and churches in southern India, the joint Church Missionary Society/Society for the Propagation of the Gospel community at Tinnevelly (Tirunelveli) at the southernmost tip of India being the flagship. The Wesleyans had a foothold in Madras. Further north, the churches were moving steadily beyond their original settlements in Bengal. The pioneering Baptist mission, led by William Carey, was in Serampore (Svirampore), where they had established a college, and then in Calcutta, Delhi and Allahabad.33 From the see of Calcutta, new zeal was added to the Anglican enterprise by the fifth bishop, Daniel Wilson, appointed in 1832, and made the metropolitan bishop for all of India in 1835. He claimed to have established nineteen new churches in his first four years, as far afield as Agra and Lucknow.34 The Church of Scotland was not far behind its English brethren. Led by Alexander Duff, an overseas mission and later a college were founded in Calcutta.35 Catholic missionaries were also supported, with the Company subsidising in fits and starts Portuguese and French missionaries in Madras and in western India, and providing for Catholic chaplains in the army.36 Historical opinion differs on the extent to which Christian missions in India in these years were united in their drive towards conversion,37 but they were certainly effective at rousing public opinion both in Britain and in India, and the accession of a new monarch provided an opportunity to intensify their campaigns.
Evangelicals were alarmed by British policy in India at the time of Victoria’s accession. First, there was the British government in India’s support for non-Christian religions – the observances of Muslims and Hindus in India. Public pressure, especially from women at home in Britain, had pushed the Indian government of Lord Bentinck into banning sati in 1829, but the ban only applied to the presidencies, and opponents of sati continued their campaigns, invoking Victoria along the way. One writer hoped that ‘the beneficent rule of the young Island Queen of the West’ be remembered for ending these ‘wretched sacrifices’.38 Moreover, in the name of toleration, religious festivals, temples and other forms of worship were supported by the state, most controversially in the shape of the pilgrim tax (levied on everyone so as to provide public funds for Hindu and Muslim pilgrimages). Both the tax and the Jagannath temple at Puri, the principal destination for Hindu pilgrims, were condemned by evangelical churchmen, who mobilised their congregations into a frenzied campaign. Over 400 public petitions calling for the suppression of ‘idolatry’ in India poured into Parliament in Victoria’s first year.39 Their supporters were quick to point out the contradiction between the advent of a new Christian queen and the persistence of state support for what was deemed an idolatrous religion. ‘Shall the British government continue its patronage of this system, when by it the enthronement of our Queen is disgraced,’ thundered John Eley, a Leeds reverend, just days before Victoria’s coronation, whilst a few days later a Unitarian minister in Newcastle hoped that ‘under her sway’ the ‘debasing power of idolatry’ would be destroyed.40
However, it was another issue – the expansion of the Church of England in the Indian subcontinent – on which evangelical expectations of the new queen focused over the longer term. Spurred by the success of the new bishops in Madras and Bombay, the Church of England pushed for additional sees elsewhere in the Indian subcontinent. In 1841 the Bishop of London co-ordinated the new Colonial Bishoprics Fund, an initiative of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, supported at its inaugural public meeting by William Gladstone, then an opposition Tory MP.41 Much of the work of the Fund was focused elsewhere in the Empire. But its efforts were felt in India and its surrounding territory too. Encouraged by his superior in London, the Bishop of Calcutta, Daniel Wilson, was instrumental in establishing a new diocese at Colombo in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in 1845, and a decade later laid the foundations for the first English church in Rangoon (Yangon) after the East India Company forces invaded Burma (Myanmar). In India Wilson pressed ahead with plans to increase his establishment in Calcutta, so as to be able to send out more missionary clergy to the north-west and south to Madras, and to create a new subdivision of the diocese at Agra, in the heart of the old Mughal empire.42 In 1845 he returned to Britain to muster support. He found none from the Court of Directors of the East India Company, and at the Board of Control Lord Ripon proved reluctant to intervene. However, Wilson secured an audience with the queen in March 1846, and returned to Calcutta with her personal gift of ten pieces of gold communion plate for the new cathedral in the city, duly consecrated two years later. A small token, perhaps, but much was made by Wilson of this royal contribution, and churchgoers in Calcutta seldom missed a chance thereafter to show their affection for their queen.43
Queen Victoria was an unwitting accomplice of the evangelical mission in India in the late 1830s and 1840s. Missionary publications detailing the onward march of the Christian church in India were sent to her and to Prince Albert.44 Her regular dealings with the Bishop of London at a moment when the Anglican episcopate was going global undoubtedly reminded her of her duties as a Protestant monarch in a burgeoning empire. But in matters ecclesiastical, as in affairs of the state, she remained a Whig queen, and the Whigs in government were as indifferent to missionary creep in India as the East India Company was firmly opposed. Not for the first time in her life, Victoria became the focus of religious reform movements in India without getting involved herself. For her views about India to take shape, there needed to be a change of scene and of male company. That came with her marriage in 1840 to Albert, and the exit of the Whigs from government a year later.
East India Men
Until the change of government from Whig to Conservative in the late summer of 1841, Victoria was kept away from Indian affairs. The Whig prime minister, Lord Melbourne fed her snippets of information, especially as Lord Auckland’s ill-advised invasion of Afghanistan unfolded, alarming her with news of Ranjit Singh’s death in September 1839 and the self-immolation of some of the women at his court which accompanied his demise.45 Otherwise, her lines of communication were poor. Hobhouse, the president of the Board of Control, was frequently at the Pa
lace in his ministerial capacity and as a dinner guest, but he revealed little of official business to the queen, even when prompted by Melbourne.46 All began to change however with Victoria’s marriage to her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in February 1840, an important turning point in her life as monarch, not least in relation to India. A married queen, and the prospect of a dynasty to follow, augured well for the survival and security of her reign. Breaking with the protocol followed at her accession, Government House in Calcutta led the way in announcing the marriage with fireworks and illuminations.47 Effusive addresses of congratulation were sent from the citizens of Madras and Bombay, first for the marriage, and then over the next two years to welcome the first babies of the next generation of royals: Princess Victoria (born November 1840) and Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales (born just under a year later). Inevitably, the Prince of Wales, as future king, attracted more excitement than his elder sister.48 These were not exclusively European celebrations. In Bombay, one of the principal Parsi businessmen of the city, Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, played a conspicuous role in helping to organise the addresses.49 Princely states – in the Carnatic, Gwalior, Sindh and Indore – sent addresses or celebrated with durbars and fireworks.50
That Victoria’s marriage and her motherhood generated more headlines in India than her accession and coronation is not surprising. Crowning a monarch was one thing, finding a mate and producing a male heir was another, as anyone familiar with the House of Hanover in Britain, or with the princely houses of India, could attest. Her union with Albert, and the progeny it produced at a rapid rate (nine children in seventeen years), firmly established Victoria’s as a monarchy built to last. Escaping the first two assassination attempts of her reign in 1840 and 1842 – both widely reported in India – helped too.51 The story of Albert’s role here, as family patriarch, has been told many times. But just as important was the way in which he bolstered Victoria’s political presence. Lord Melbourne and his ministers now had her consort to engage with as well as Victoria, and, although Albert was as youthful as the queen, he was not naïve on constitutional matters. Until his death in 1861, Albert contributed to a double-headed monarchy, undertaking public roles that Victoria could not, and developing expertise and interests that lay beyond her reach.52
One of these was the Anti-Slavery Society, a large meeting of which Prince Albert presided over in June 1840. It was the first occasion on which he spoke publicly, most probably pushed into participating by the queen, deeply impressed as she was by the example of William Wilberforce.53 By the 1840s, the work of the Society had moved away from slavery in the British West Indies (abolished in 1833), and was focused instead on curbing slavery in America, on ending the slave traffic in coastal Africa and persuading the remaining slave powers such as Brazil to end the transatlantic trade. Additionally, at the moment when Albert guested at its convention, the Society was campaigning to outlaw the remaining pockets of slavery in India, and also pressing Parliament to monitor more closely an invidious new form of slavery: forced migration of poor Indian labourers to plantation economies in the West Indies and elsewhere – the so-called ‘coolie’ system.54 Albert did not reappear at another Anti-Slavery Society meeting, but two years later the new prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, did pass on to him a lengthy memorandum dealing with slavery in India.55
From the Anti-Slavery Society, it was a natural step for Albert to become involved in another evangelical cause: the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel overseas, the oldest and most influential of all the Christian missionary organisations in Britain. He became its president in 1851, and delivered an address at its 150th anniversary celebration of that year. It was an unmemorable oration, being a short review of the Society’s achievements, save for the prince’s observation that the Society had helped to ‘carry Christianity to the vast territories of India and Australia, which are at last again to be peopled by the Anglo-Saxon race’.56 This was a curious statement. Given the occasion and his audience, it is likely that he was echoing some of the rhetoric of the Society and the evangelical churchmen they supported overseas. In endorsing the missionary enterprise in such unequivocal language, Albert was firmly attaching the monarchy to the export of Christianity to India. Where Victoria had been no more than a silent talisman for evangelical aspirations, Albert was turning out to be a more vocal champion.
Albert’s greater role in public affairs coincided with the return of the Conservatives to government in 1841. As the administration of the country changed, so too did the personnel of the Court. For the first time India became more embedded in Queen Victoria’s immediate world. Two changes in the royal household were to prove of long-term significance. In 1842 Lady Charlotte Canning and Lady Susan Ramsay were made ladies of the bedchamber. Their husbands joined Peel’s government (Charles Canning as under-secretary of state at the Foreign Office in 1841, James Ramsay as vice-president at the Board of Trade in 1843).57 Both men went on to fill the top post in India: Ramsay (better known as the Marquess of Dalhousie) was governor-general from 1848 until 1856, when he was succeeded by Canning, who became the first viceroy after the transfer of the Government of India from the East India Company to the Crown. Both men took their wives with them to India. By the time he went to India in 1848 the Marquess of Dalhousie was already a trusted servant of the court. In 1842 he organised the queen’s first major visit outside London and the Home Counties – to Edinburgh – ensuring the greater visibility of the young monarch.58 Slowly but surely, the links in a chain which would connect Victoria to India across her long reign were emerging. Peel’s ministry also kept the queen up to date with news from India. Lord Fitzgerald, president of the Board of Control from 1841 to 1843, was especially assiduous. It was Fitzgerald who brought to court her first Indian visitor – Dwarkanath Tagore, the Bengali businessman and philanthropist – whom she sketched.59
Peel’s government also introduced two Indian political heavyweights into Victoria and Albert’s world: the Duke of Wellington and Lord Ellenborough. Both had a decisive impact on the royal view of India during the 1840s. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, returned to his old post of commander in chief of the Army in 1842. In that role he struck up a friendship with Albert, and, indeed, took the young royal family under his wing more generally. Soon after his appointment, the duke hosted the royal visit to the naval docks at Portsmouth, and, later in the year, Victoria and Albert visited Walmer Castle, one of the duke’s residences, perched on the edge of the Kent coast.60 He carried the sword of state at the christening of the Prince of Wales in 1842 and later became godparent to their third child, Arthur, born in 1850 and destined for a military career, the latter event captured in Franz Winterhalter’s 1851 group portrait of the royal couple with their infant son, receiving a gold casket from the duke, who might easily be taken for one of the adoring Magi. The Duke of Wellington was a key influence on Victoria and Albert’s understanding of Indian affairs in the 1840s. Unlike his predecessor as titular head of the armed forces, Lord Hill, Wellington was a veteran of warfare in India. His reputation had been forged in the wars against Tipu in the south of India forty years previously, and he remained attached to the strategy of keeping India lightly governed but heavily fortified. Now in his seventies, Wellington was something of a handicap to civil government at home – his jitters over the Chartists in 1842 and 1848 brought much ridicule. However, he retained his renown as a military strategist. Successive volumes of his despatches from the era of the French and Napoleonic wars – including those from his Indian campaigns – were published to critical acclaim in the late 1830s. As Britain’s invasion of Afghanistan went from bad to worse in the early 1840s his public pronouncements on Indian affairs carried weight.61 The duke also encouraged Prince Albert in his military career, and in his side interest in army reform. Albert had received military training as part of his schooling, and shortly after his marriage to Victoria he was given command of a cavalry regiment of the British army, the 11th Hussars, their cherry-coloured
trousers matching the livery of the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha house. From this point on Albert took a keen interest in the British way of warfare, and by the end of the decade was regularly writing memoranda on recruitment and the size of the military establishment, on training and practice in peacetime, and British campaigns in India. So impressed was the duke by Albert’s military acumen that he suggested in 1849 that Albert might succeed him as commander-in-chief.62
Peel’s administration contained one other senior politician who now came to influence royal views about India. The new president of the Board of Control was Edward Law, Lord Ellenborough, and within a year he had moved closer to the action in India, going out to succeed Auckland as governor-general, thereby beginning an almost uninterrupted Conservative party monopoly on the head of the Indian government throughout the rest of Victoria’s reign. Seldom can a change of office have produced such a turnaround in policy. A veteran of the Duke of Wellington’s Cabinet of 1828–30, Ellenborough had been a cocksure and strident critic of the Whigs at home and in India during the ensuing decade. He disliked the close relationship that the Whigs enjoyed with the bankers and stockholders of the East India Company. He opposed the Anglicising policies of Bentinck and Auckland, and on arrival in India dramatically set about bringing the Afghan war to an end, before embarking on even more decisive intervention in Sindh and across the seas in China.63 Victoria and Albert, as the next chapter narrates, looked on in wonder.
