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ALEXANDER
HERIOT MACKONOCHIE
1825 -
1887 First
Vicar of S. Alban the Martyr, Holborn. Fr.
Mackonochie is remembered as a ‘Ritualist’ Yet no one will ever understand
Mackonochie or the pastoral and evangelistic success he and others like him had
in the second half of the 19th century if one supposes they were
‘just ritualists.’ They were not; Mackonochie introduced ceremonies into church
services, but also was committed to the daily Eucharist, to the regular use of
the confessional, and to an orderly ‘spiritual life’ for all Christians.
He was also committed to the people of his parish, founding its first
Church School and obtaining land at Brookwood for a burial plot. An
enthusiasm for people Supported
by a strong team of curates, never trying to work alone, he found his life among
the teeming thousands of the central London slum in which stood his Clergy House
and great Butterfield church – since replaced after Blitz destruction. ‘To
say that Mr. Mackonochie is popular with the poor amongst whom he lives is not
to use the right word’ wrote a non-Christian contemporary.
‘It is not so much admiration or reverence they feel for him, as
personal affection…. Mr. Mackonochie’s parishioners know that he is among
them to do his duty by them thoroughly and conscientiously, and they feel that
they can rely upon it being done.’ The
spirituality, which found Jesus in the Eucharistic bread and wine, sent
Mackonochie out to find Jesus in the people of the dreary alleys and courts of
his parish. ‘The special virtue in the movement in the Church of England of
which Mr Mackonochie was the leader, was that it brought light into the dark
places, and beauty and orderliness and peace before weary eyes and harassed
minds, and sweet and ennobling music to ears accustomed to discordant curses,
and screams of anger, and cries of pain. That
was what Mr Mackonochie’s Ritualism meant for the poor.
What it meant for the rich was a certain mystical reverence and
tenderness for their wretched human brethren in whom they now saw shining the
divinity of Christ. This enthusiasm
for humanity was the essence of Mr. Mackonochie’s Ritualism.’ The
Holborn parish was appallingly overcrowded and Mackonochie at a public meeting
about housing described how his parishioners lived as whole families with five,
six or seven children all crowded into one room, eight, ten or twelve feet
square. He asked, ‘What are
Christian people doing who are content to allow them to live in apartments which
in the country would hardly be thought fit for a pig to live in?
People cry out against drunkenness but how could anyone, living in such
dens, be expected to keep from the glitter and temptations of the gin palace?’ His craving for light and air for his people was finally met
well after his death to produce the slum-clearance spaciousness of the Bourne
Estate buildings that replace the ‘gardens’, courts and alleys, which he
knew and loved. Mackonochie
was no Christian Socialist, but his relevance for us lies in his clear
perception of the implications of the incarnation and sacramentalism in the
circumstances of 19th century London.
His was a liberation theology of metropolitan squalor and deprivation. Our own century has its equivalents. A
friend to all Clear in
the memory of those who loved Mackonochie was his readiness to look after people
individually. His style of parochial management left him largely engaged in
the confessional and in talking to those who asked for his personal care and
interest. He is remembered for not
being hurried, ready to give attention, and prepared to listen for hours on end.
For our day his rigidity and lack of doubt and self-doubt will inevitably
seem to make him an unsympathetic figure, but as a confessor he was exceedingly
popular. All kinds of people
learned and unlearned, rich and poor, found their way to him, literally in
hundreds…they seem to catch the contagion of his courage. Mackonochie’s
ritualism can hardly guide us in the liturgical reform and change of today as
the circumstances are too different, but must inevitably ask the priests of our
day about their love for the age they live in and their commitment to the people
in their care. For the
layman and laywoman of today Mackonochie’s story says much about the laity’s
need to pray for the Church’s priests and to give them friendship and support
in their calling, for it is clear that much that Mackonochie endured in the
public eye was only bearable because of the prayerful support and friendship of
his congregation. The whole church at Brooke Street, not just the Vicar, was
mobilised to proclaim the gospel and to share the special understanding of
catholic life that they had received. Mackonochie
did not have a ‘parish magazine’ as such but his Annual Reports suggest an
obsession with religious matters. Such exclusive interests would not be
appropriate today, but Mackonochie knew that the faith is massive in its
content, as well as exciting in its expression and he expected his people to
learn it. There is
in that a message for our day, when we need to know our beliefs, and understand
how they form a view of the world, and are not just a matter of interest for
those who like religion. Mackonochie
taught people how to live because he realised that the catholic religion is
about all life, of which Almighty God is the Creator and Redeemer. Ritualism!
What did
the ritualists do? On paper it did
not amount to very much. The Holy
Communion was set at the centre of the Church’s worship and celebrated with
all the dignity that vestments, ceremonial and music could muster.
The Holy Eucharist or the Mass, as the Lord’s own service rapidly came
to be called, was celebrated with a frequency unknown in England since the
Reformation. People actually came
to it so that for example in 1867 there were no less than 17,392 communions at
S. Alban’s, Holborn – in a parish where the church had not been opened until
5 years before. Recall that
vestments and ceremonial were regarded as the especial property of Roman
Catholics, and recognised at once as signifying very important doctrines about
the Eucharist and, as Mackonochie believed, humanity – and protestant and
reformed England had something to worry about.
Recall too that the Holy Eucharist did not then play an important part in
the spirituality of members of the Church of England and one recognises the
beginning of a revolution in Church life. The
Oxford Movement had begun to get something moving! But the
Tracts being read in the parishes rapidly began to affect the way priests
exercised their ministry, conducted worship, and guided the Church life of the
people. Because the Tractarians
were trying to recover the sacramental element of the Christian faith and put
some weight into the idea of the Church those who read their books, when they
acted on the insights they found there, inevitably became ‘ritualists.’ Technically
speaking the word is a misnomer, but it is clear enough what it meant to the
Victorians: it meant that going to church might be a very different experience
from what it had been in the 1830’s and 40’s. The
Eucharist – centre and focus of the Church Mackonochie
was ordained in 1849. When S. Alban
the Martyr, Holborn, of which he was the first Vicar, opened in 1862 it was to
demonstrate in practical terms that the Eucharist is the centre of the
Church’s worship and should be the centre of private and parish life, and that
because in the Eucharist the Body and Blood of Christ are – as it says in the
old catechism- ‘verily and indeed taken and received’ every possible adjunct
of teaching ceremony and edifying gesture must be employed to enable the
assembled worshippers to realise the presence in mind and heart.
As the Vicar wrote in 1868 –‘For nearly two hundred years after (the
1662 Prayer Book) people cared very little for the Church or her services.
But when in these days God was pleased to make us think more of him and
ourselves and His Sacraments, a wish was felt for things that might set these
Great Realities more plainly before us. Hence
when the time seemed to have come for me to do so I was glad to assent to your
wishes in the matter, and to give you such a service as befitted those who love
the Lord whom they worship.’ Vestments,
candles burning on altars, the use of incense and so forth were not introduced
because they were in themselves attractive or exciting, but because they were
demonstrations of what the catholic faith is all about, and those who opposed
Mackonochie and men like him did so because they recognised that they were
confronted by aspects of a faith which they did not share.
The Church Association, founded in 1865, laid clear stress on questions
of doctrine. They protested against
the errors of the ritualists, and they were not errors of ceremonial taste of
clerical dress, but doctrines of the eucharistic-sacrifice, the objective
presence of our Lord in the Eucharist, the authority of the bishop and priest to
declare forgiveness of sins, and the duty of Christians to adore our Lord as
personally present in the Blessed Sacrament. The whole
sacramental life of the Church came under fire as the catholic minded clergy
began to revive it. How puzzled
bishops must have been by the sudden burst of vituperation on the one hand and
the un-English enthusiasm on the other – how fortunate the catholic movement
was that at a central London church easily reached by the London public it was
possible to see and take part in what Lord Shaftesbury described as
‘in outward form and ritual the worship of Jupiter and Juno…. A scene
of theatrical gymnastics of singing, screaming, genuflections, such a series of
strange movements of the priests, their backs almost always to the people, as I
have never seen before even in a Romish Temple.’ Perseverance
The
catholic renewal of the Church was further fortunate in having in Mackonochie
tenacity and apparent imperviousness to opposition, which was only short of
fanatical. His portrait hangs in
the Brooke Street Clergy House now, the face sad, determined and thin, but the
jaw line rock-like. The same stern face gazes up from the magnificent marble of
his recumbent effigy in the Mackonochie Chapel.
If there was to be opposition, Mackonochie could take it. Beginning
in 1867 Fr Mackonochie was brought many times before the Courts in one form or
another accused of misdemeanours in the conduct of public worship.
If the Bishop of London had wished to prevent it he could have done so,
by the terms of the Church Discipline Act (1840) under which Mackonochie was
first prosecuted. But Bishop Tait
did nothing: he respected Mackonochie for his ‘deep sense of the real
Christian verities and anxious love to save souls which he had,’ but he was
faced in ritualism with something he did not like and he hoped to see its end. Unfamiliar
forces were at work in the Church. Dean
Stanley of Westminster had reported to Tait after attending a celebration of the
Eucharist at S. Alban’s, Holborn, ‘I saw three men in green, and you will
find it difficult to put them down.’ Difficult
or not, the attempt was made to put Mackonochie and his like down, if not by the
bishops themselves, then by due process of law.
Today reading the reports of barristers quibbling about the difference
between a prostration and a genuflection and other niceties one wonders how many
of those in the courts had the faintest idea of what was being discussed: for
Mackonochie it was nothing less than the outward signification of ultimate
truth. Because of that he was prepared to do his work against the almost
permanent background of law cases, which finally wore him out and brought his
work at S. Alban’s to an end. S.
Peter’s, London Docks Towards
the end of 1882 Mackonochie was in danger of deprivation - that is of having his
job as Vicar of S. Alban’s, Holborn, taken from him as a punishment.
He had already once been suspended and once deprived of his pay!
The Archbishop of Canterbury – the Bishop of London of former years
–was dying. He was anxious for
peace and quiet in the Church, agonised at the scandal which would result if the
blow fell on Mackonochie, and so he encouraged him to resign from his post and
exchange jobs with the Vicar of S. Peter’s, London Docks.
Exhausted, perplexed, touched and feeling his obedience due to the
Lord’s representative, Mackonochie resigned on 1 December 1882.
A couple of days more and the Archbishop was dead.
Mackonochie went on to be Vicar of S. Peter’s, London Docks in January
1883. He was deprived of that work
also the following July, and even forbidden to officiate in any church in the
Province of Canterbury without the written permission of the local bishop.
It was an astonishing and disgraceful end of a momentous career.
Mackonochie effectively went into a nervous breakdown, returned to
Holborn Clergy House by personal invitation of the new Vicar, Fr Suckling and
his fellow clergy, for his last days. He was
present for the opening of the new S. Alban’s Parish School in January 1886,
when, vested in a white cope, with choir, servers and congregation processing
from the Church, down Baldwins Gardens, singing the S. Alban’s Hymn, “Laud
the grace of God victorious,” into the new buildings designed by the Architect
Mileham (who had also built the first Schools of Fr. Mackonochie in 1870) he
solemnly blessed the new building.
On this site now stands the block of flats known as Mackonochie House,
the School having been damaged in the Blitz, repaired to serve as a temporary
church until the Church was rebuilt after the war, and then as a Social Centre
until the land was sold for redevelopment and the present S. Alban’s Centre
built with the proceeds. Whilst
staying with the Bishop of Argyll and the Isles Fr. Mackonochie died in a
snowstorm on 15th December 1887, lost in the trackless wastes of the
Mamore Forest in the Scottish Highlands. Martyr
for Ritualism. If some of the characteristics of ‘Victorian’ are passion, determination, earnestness, and pathos the story of Alexander Heriot Mackonochie may be regarded as a typically Victorian one. He lived the life of a parish priest, not in the quiet steady work of pastoral and evangelistic ministry, but as a national figure, derided in Punch, caricatured in December 1870, Vanity Fair in the Apex ‘Men of the Day’ series (‘he makes religion a tragedy, and the movements of his muscles a solemn ceremony’), harried by the Courts, persuaded to resign his job by the death-bed letter of an Archbishop, and after a process of slow and sad personal disintegration, died lost in the bleak snows of the Highlands, muddled and tired. The motto of the church he served as Vicar for 20 years was ‘perseverance’ and it might well have been his own. From
the heights of our 21st century secularism, in a society which is
learning to be multi-racial and which has already learned not to be too excited
about religion, and less so about God, we may stand amazed at what men were
prepared to do to each other in religion’s name.
At least Mackonochie never underwent physical Physical
torture – he was a century or two late for that as far as England is concerned
– but he was certainly made a Martyr.
Yet so strangely Victorian is Mackonochie, so much a creature of the conflicts that exercised the English Church in the 19th century – and as exercise often does, thereby strengthened her – one may wonder if he can have any possible relevance. But consider he died in 1887. He left S. Alban’s for the East End in 1883 – a century later I as his successor was visiting an elderly man from the parish in St Bartholomew’s Hospital, “Remember the old priests?” he said “course I do – remember all of ‘em – Fr.Mackonochie….” If a priest can make that sort of impression upon a parish, he must have something to tell us! Key Dates
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Copyright © 2007
S. Alban the Martyr, Holborn
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