Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

Milner’s relationship with history was lived out day by day inseparably from his
existence in the present. It was typical of him to point out to Gage that the doctrine under
dispute in 1821 was the one for which Thomas More laid down his life. More, who
resisted Henry VIII’s claims to supremacy over the English church, was one of the most
resonant historical figures evoked on both sides of the debate by participants for whom
any change in the contingent circumstances since 1535 was of no relevance. Southey, the
most vocal popular opponent of Emancipation took a similar view. In his Sir Thomas
More or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society of 1829, he agreed with
Milner on the facts while coming to an exactly opposite conclusion. For Southey More
‘the mild, the learned and the good’ who died for his loyalty to the Catholic Church,
offered the perfect argument against Emancipation. 15
Romanists ought to be admitted to every office of trust, honour, or emolument, which is not connected with
legislative power; but … it is against the plainest rules of policy to entrust men with power in the State
whose bounden religious duty it is to subvert, if they can, the Church. 16
For Milner his experience of the past as seamlessly co-existent with the present
led to a not merely personal but a religious identification with history. His antiquarianism
and his theology were inseparable and are woven around each other throughout his major
work, the Antiquities of Winchester. The book caused offence on both fronts
simultaneously, to some antiquaries with its account of the origins of Gothic and to some
Anglicans with its attack on the late low-church Bishop of Winchester, Benjamin Hoadly.
In the ensuing pamphlet battle on the question of Hoadly’s reputation Milner continued
his assault by citing the bishop’s monument in the cathedral which is cut deep into one of
the shafts of the chancel arch. So, he argued ‘it may be said of Hoadly’ that ‘both living
and dying he undermined the church of which he was a prelate’. 17
It was a good joke, but it was also indicative of the extent to which for Milner the
fabric of the past and the faith of the present were interfused. His own chapel of St Peter
15 Southey, Sir Thomas More, p. iv
16 Southey, Sir Thomas More, p. iv.
17 Milner, Letters to a Prebendary, p. 216.
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