Untitled - Electric Scotland

1842-50] THE HAMPDEN CONTROVERSY 131
Rugby
The above seems to have been the only instance in his
life in which his name came before the outside
public in any other capacity than that of a successful
schoolmaster. But there were certain controversies of
the time from which it was almost impossible for any
prominent Oxford graduate to hold aloof. Foremost
among these was the Hampden Controversy of 1847.
On November I5th, 1847, Lord John Russell recom
mended Dr. Renn Dickson Hampden to the Queen for the
vacant Bishopric of Hereford, and a commotion of the
wildest kind immediately began. Eleven years had
elapsed since Dr. Hampden, on his appointment by Lord
Melbourne as Regius Professor of Divinity, had been
practically censured by the Convocation of the University
of Oxford for the supposed unsoundness of his theology
as indicated by the Bampton Lectures he had delivered
four years previously. 1 Under this censure Dr. Hampden
had rested ever since, and it is difficult to say whether the
Tractarian or the Evangelical School was the more
indignant when Lord John Russell,
in his desire for
a liberal theologian, nominated him to the Crown for the
vacant Bishopric. The history of what followed has
recently been published in full detail in the Biography of
Bishop Wilberforce, 2
who, foremost at first in opposition to
the appointment, caused extreme surprise by a real or
supposed change of front during the warfare which ensued.
An attempted prosecution for heresy was vetoed by Bishop
Wilberforce, but thirteen bishops and innumerable clergy
joined in protesting to the Prime Minister against the
nomination. A counter memorial in Dr. Hampden s
A statute was passed, by 474 votes to 94, depriving the new Regius
Professor of his share in the nomination of select preachers, on the ground
that he had "so treated theological questions, that in this behalf, the
Lectures had been
University has no confidence in him." The Bampton
delivered in 1832.
2
Vol. i. pp. 419-514.