Hackney Phalanx

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Group of English politicians, early C19

title: "Hackney Phalanx" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["history-of-the-church-of-england", "history-of-the-london-borough-of-hackney", "1805-establishments-in-england", "19th-century-protestantism", "19th-century-in-england"] description: "Group of English politicians, early C19" topic_path: "history" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_Phalanx" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Group of English politicians, early C19 ::

Hackney Phalanx was a group of high-church Tory defenders of Anglican orthodoxy prominent for around 25 years from . They consisted of both clergy and laymen, and filled many of the higher posts of the Church of England of the time. The Phalanx, also called the Clapton sect by analogy with the evangelicals of the Clapham sect, were active reformers within their common theological beliefs, and controlled the British Critic. One of the Phalanx leaders, Henry Handley Norris, was particularly influential in the church appointments made by the Earl of Liverpool. A. B. Webster characterized the group as:

The Hackney core

The core group of the Hackney Phalanx, which suggested the geographical association with Hackney borough then east of the London conurbation, consisted of Henry Handley Norris, the layman Joshua Watson, and his clerical brother John Watson. They were active in the field of education, aiming to counter the schools set up on the scheme of Joseph Lancaster. Joshua Watson and Norris purchased the British Critic in 1811. They also influenced the founding in 1818 of the Christian Remembrancer, another high-church journal. Norris took on Robert Aspland and William Dealtry in the early controversy over the British and Foreign Bible Society, and projected a separate Bible society for Hackney.

The context of Hackney in the first two decades of the 19th century was of an area that as a suburb of London had wealthy families, but also an active nonconformist intellectual and religious life, particularly Unitarians. The Hackney New College and Homerton College contested the ground with the orthodox Anglicans. The Phalanx, among their other activities, built new Anglican churches. Theologically they looked backwards to William Jones of Nayland.

Associations

The associates of the Phalanx were a much broader group. They included a generation of chaplains to Charles Manners-Sutton, who was a significant patron: Christopher Wordsworth, George D'Oyly, and John Lonsdale, with the high churchmen George Cambridge, Charles Lloyd, and Richard Mant. Francis Warre-Cornish names as sympathisers John Bowles, churchmen in addition to Cambridge and Wordsworth, and the judges John Taylor Coleridge, John Patteson, John Richardson, and Nicholas Conyngham Tindal.

There was a significant overlap with the early membership of the Club of Nobody's Friends, a dining club founded in 1801 by William Stevens.

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

  • {{cite book |last=Cornish |first=Francis Warre |year=1910 |title=The English Church in the Nineteenth Century: Part I |url=https://archive.org/details/historyenglishch01warruoft |series=The History of the English Church |volume=8 |location=London |publisher=Macmillan and Co. |isbn=978-0-7905-7034-1 |access-date=13 October 2018
  • {{cite book |last=Corsi |first=Pietro |author-link=Pietro Corsi |year=1988 |title=Science and Religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican Debate, 1800–1860 |location=Cambridge, England |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-24245-5
  • {{cite book |year=2005 |editor1-last=Cross |editor1-first=F. L. |editor1-link=Frank Leslie Cross |editor2-last=Livingstone |editor2-first=E. A. |editor2-link=Elizabeth Livingstone |title=The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church |edition=rev. 3rd |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acref/9780192802903.001.0001 |isbn=978-0-19-280290-3
  • {{cite book |last=Gibson |first=William |author-link=William Gibson (historian) |year=1994 |title=Church, State and Society, 1760–1850 |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's Press |doi=10.1007/978-1-349-23204-8 |isbn=978-0-333-58757-7
  • {{cite book |last=Gregory |first=Jeremy |year=2000 |title=Restoration, Reformation and Reform, 1660–1828: Archbishops of Canterbury and Their Diocese |location=Oxford |publisher=Clarendon Press |publication-date=2002 |isbn=978-0-19-820830-3
  • {{cite encyclopedia |last1=Lee |first1=Sidney |author1-link=Sidney Lee |last2=Hinings |first2=Jessica |year=2008 |orig-year=2004 |title=Bowdler, John (1783–1815) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |edition=online |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/3030
  • {{cite book |last=Nockles |first=Peter B. |year=1994 |title=The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship, 1760–1857 |location=Cambridge, England |publisher=Cambridge University Press |publication-date=1997 |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511520570 |isbn=978-0-521-58719-8
  • {{cite encyclopedia |last=Nockles |first=Peter B. |author-mask= |year=2007a |orig-year=2004 |title=Norris, Henry Handley (1771–1850) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |edition=online |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/20274
  • {{cite encyclopedia |last=Nockles |first=Peter B. |author-mask= |year=2007b |orig-year=2004 |title=Watson, Joshua (1771–1855) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |edition=online |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/28851
  • {{cite encyclopedia |last=Smith |first=Mark |year=2007 |title=Hackney Phalanx (act. 1800–1830) |encyclopedia=Oxford Dictionary of National Biography |edition=online |location=Oxford |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/52465

References

  1. Webster, A. B.. (1954). "Joshua Watson: The Story of a Layman, 1771–1855".

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history-of-the-church-of-englandhistory-of-the-london-borough-of-hackney1805-establishments-in-england19th-century-protestantism19th-century-in-england