Untitled - Electric Scotland

450 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. xvi.
borders. In 1848 Miss Sellon began her remarkable
work at Devonport, where she was at first supported by
the Bishop of Exeter, in the face of a loud outcry from
the ultra-Protestants, and though the Bishop found it
necessary, upon other grounds, to withdraw his support,
the excellent results of the labours of Miss Sellon s Sisters
among the rough population of the seaport became be
fore long her best defence. Within the next few years,
but again independently of one another, two Sisterhoods
were founded in the Diocese of Oxford at Wantage,
under Mr. Butler, now Dean of Lincoln, and at Clewer,
under the Rev. T. T. Carter. The first Superior of the
Clewer Sisterhood dedicated to St. John the Baptist-
was Harriet Monsell, widow of the Rev. Charles Monsell,
and cousin to Mrs. Tait. 1 Canon Carter has drawn a
graphic record of the inception of her devoted work, and
of the spirit and power with which she guided it. 2 The
intimacy of her friendship with Mrs. Tait, and so with
the Bishop of London, must have helped him not a little
in appreciating the value of the new enterprise, when his
own diocese, to its great advantage, became the workfield
of so many Sisterhoods. And such help was needed, for
it is hardly too much to say that at first the Community
Life, the Sisters special dress, and the very notion of
living under rule, were
"
everywhere spoken against."
is difficult, in days when Sisterhoods have won their way,
not to tolerance only but to enthusiastic support from
almost every section of the Church, to realise the unpopu
larity, the suspicion, and even the open denunciation which
had thirty years ago to be faced by any Bishop who
threw over them the help of his official sanction. The
Bishops of Exeter and of Oxford were regarded by many
1 See vol. ii. p. 275.
2
Life of Harriet Monsell, by the Rev. T. T. Carter.
It