| WHEN BISHOPS and their spouses arrived at the Lambeth Conference this week, it is unlikely that their “Welcome to Canterbury” packs gave the true reasons why the city is such an appropriate venue for a body as troubled as the Anglican Communion.
The University of Kent, the Conference centre, is one of the better examples of 1960s academic architecture, but you have to go back many years before the Honest to God decade to see what a wonderfully Anglican choice the university is.
Back in May 1830, the Canterbury to Whitstable Railway became Britain’s first passenger-carrying system. Visitors to Canterbury from London travelled by sea to Whitstable, and then on by train. The university buildings now cover the final stretch of that pioneer railway.
Perhaps the Anglican link is pioneering. But perhaps it is also the way the carriages were hauled for some of the journey by locomotive, and then, when the gradient became too steep, they were pulled by cable — a very Anglican type of face-saving compromise.
There is a warning for 2008, however. The compromise soon hit the buffers once a direct rail route to Canterbury opened, and the Whitstable line became redundant.
Given the Anglican ability to see both sides of a question, it is also interesting that, in the Napoleonic Wars, the Canterbury area saw some locals acting in a very open-minded, non-judgemental way, supplementing their income from smuggling by helping French prisoners of war to escape.
Means of escape are also being talked about today, such as by those in the United States wanting to escape into imported jurisdictions from what they see as over-liberal dioceses.
Yet the Archbishop of Canterbury will probably have it easy compared with his predecessor at the time the Whitstable-Canterbury railway opened, Archbishop Howley. This unfortunate man was pelted with “missiles of every description, pieces of brick-bat, cabbage stalks” by the local citizens who disliked his opposition to the Reform Bill, as reported in The Times of 10 August 1832.
No cabbage stalks in 2008 — composting rules in our day — but there will be debating battles ahead, however. Most of those fighting them, however, are unlikely to know that the last battle fought on British soil took place in 1838 at Bossenden Wood, a few miles from Canterbury.
John Nichols Tom, a Cornishman who was to spend several periods in an asylum, came to Canterbury at the time of the agitation for the Reform Bill. He assumed the rank of Knight of Malta and the name Sir William Courtenay. He also claimed to be Earl of Devon.
In another echo of the present, the real Earl had fled to the Continent, accused of homosexual behaviour. The press of the day talked of his actions being such “that could scarcely be alluded to”. Some bishops might wish that a similar silence obtained today.
Unsuccessful in an attempt to enter Parliament, Courtenay then championed the cause of the local farm labourers who were suffering a decline of employment and wages because of the advent of machinery. His final claim was that he was the Messiah who would bring about the Kingdom of God on earth and justice for the poor.
Some impoverished labourers rallied to his banner, and clashed with the army from the garrison at Bossenden Wood, near the village of Dunkirk (not the French port). Courtenay and several of his deluded followers were killed.
If the delegates need cheering up, they should go a few miles coastward from Canterbury to Seasalter — not just for oysters, but to hear the story of its 18th-century Vicar, Thomas Patten. Trencherman, part-time smuggler, he had an eye for a pretty woman and a permanent blind eye to the Establishment. He proclaimed his independence by signing himself “Bishop of Seasalter”, and could perhaps be seen as a forerunner to modern rival bishops.
Patten provides another link with our day. In 1725, he wrote: “It has been the wettest summer that anyone can recall. Crops ruined and livestock sick. As for my parishioners — some grumbled, many cursed; a few prayed.” Has much changed?
Alan Edwards is a secondhand book-dealer in Whitstable.
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