Untitled - Electric Scotland

1856-60] THK ST. BARNABAS RIOTS 215
as unnecessary or inexpedient by the earlier Tractarians,
but which commended itself to some at least among their
followers as the necessary and logical outcome of what
had gone before. Foremost among these Ritualists/ as
they now began for the first time to be called, was the
Rev. W. J. E. Bennett, Vicar of St. Paul s Church, Knightsbridge.
He was indefatigable as a preacher and a pastor,
and the result of his appeals to a wealthy congregation
was the erection of the district Church of St. Barnabas,
Pimlico, which was consecrated by Bishop Blomfield on
June 11, 1850. Mr. Bennett s ritual in the parish church
had been of so 4
advanced a type as to call for several
remonstrances from the Bishop, but St. Barnabas , it was
evident, was to be the scene of much more develop
ment, and the storm soon began in earnest. It was the
year of the Papal Aggression, and when Lord John
Russell, in his famous Durham Letter, fanned the anti-
Papal fury by denouncing the
"
Church of England who were
"
"
unworthy
sons of the
forward in leading their
flocks step by step to the very verge of the precipice," he
gave the signal for a clamorous outcry against Mr.
Bennett, to whom he was known to be referring, and a
series of disgraceful disturbances began.
" The
Protestant cause," says Bishop Blomfield s biographer,
"was taken up by those to whom all religions were equally
indifferent, and all excuses for a riot equally acceptable, and
every Sunday saw the Church doors besieged by
a mob of
disorderly supporters of the Reformation, and the services inter
rupted by their groans
or hisses." l
Far from yielding to this clamour, Mr. Bennett became
firmer than ever in his resistance, not only to the mob, but
to the Bishop, and he formally signified his intention of
taking
^ Memoir of BisJiop Bio wfield, vol. ii. p. 146.